


We’ll Never Sleep (God Knows We’ll Try)

by hitlikehammers



Category: Heroes - Fandom, Lost
Genre: Crossover, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-07
Updated: 2010-12-06
Packaged: 2017-11-01 18:55:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 34,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/360126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hitlikehammers/pseuds/hitlikehammers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s coffee and cocktails and friends and foes. It’s death and drinks and waking up in her bed, in his arms. It’s the past and the present and the force when they collide, like fate and entropy and momentum; it’s something they don’t recognize, can’t remember, can’t ignore, and it’s up and down and in and out and for the record? They were screwed from square one. <b>General Series Spoilers for Lost and Heroes.</b></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

When she opens her eyes, she tries to focus, to see.

The day is bright, bold – the color of the sky washed out but sharp, sure, saturated against the fluff of white, the clouds that move too fast with the winds up the coast; a reminder of the core of things, the heart of them: neither fleeting nor flimsy, the inescapable bulk of just living, simply being.

Because the world, Juliet thinks, is heavy. It’s heavy by nature. It’s just the way things are.

But somehow, as she lives and breathes, the space between heartbeats where gravity means nothing and her entire being shucks off its weight; in that singular, sacred moment, the world is also lighter.

For the first time in weeks -- months, maybe -- she unfolds her sunglasses and balances the frames against the bridge of her nose; it doesn’t make any sense, she knows that, but for some reason, the universe – _her_ universe -- seems brighter, freer. For once, the universe feels like it’s on her side.

She unscrews the cap on her Aquafina bottle with delicate, dizzy spins; resists the urge to call Rachel, just to hear the giddy joy that’ll be in her sister’s voice, just to let it seep deeper into her own skin, mingle with the butterflies in her stomach as she breathes, just breathes -- swallows lukewarm water like the nectar of the gods and keeps an eye out for Edmund as she tries to figure out just what he hopes to say.

And there’s a part of her -- the part that never went away -- that wants him to look at her and see what he’s missing when she tells him the news, tells him that her sister is pregnant because she was persistent, because she was patient.

Because she’s goddamn brilliant, and Edmund Burke was too much of an idiot to see what he had, to know what he’d lost.

She’s not delusional, though. She knows he’ll look at her, smile that dumbfounded, pinched sort of smile he always gives when anyone other than himself does something astounding, and ask when she plans to have an article drafted, detailing her findings. She’s not delusional; but she’s hopeful -- hopeful as she winds her hair around her knuckle with merry-go-round twists, like cotton candy on a stick, spun sweet and golden in the summer sun -- that time can turn backward and decisions can be remade and maybe, even if nothing can be fixed, Ed will look at her the way he used to, the way she remembers. Just once.

When he walks out of the facility, she’s on her feet in an instant, looking to intercept him before the door so much as closes behind him.

She has him in her sights when she hits something warm, solid, heavy -- when she’s stumbling backwards for lack of balance and catching herself on the heels of her palms as she hits the ground.

“Oh, god,” a voice comes from above her, and she has to squint to see more than a lean, clean-cut silhouette; her sunglasses are gone.

“I’m sorry,” says the man -- because it is a man, a brunette with strong features and sharp eyes and a deep, smooth voice that casts warmth even where his outline casts a shadow. He reaches down to help her up and she blinks at his hand for a moment before she lets him haul her to her feet, his grip strong against the skinned flesh where she’d skidded on the concrete. “Are you okay?”

She dusts herself off and cracks her neck. “I’m fine.”

“You’re sure?” he asks, running a frenzied hand over her shoulders as if touching could tell him the truth that she might be hiding; and maybe it does, because he seems to take her word for it when she smiles and nods for emphasis.

He pauses for a moment, seems to take her in from the neck up, and it’s a strange sensation, the intense scrutiny that’s over in a second, that’s broken, but resonates after it’s gone.

“Can I buy you a drink?” he asks, a little sudden, and with a quirk of the lips that betrays practice, routine -- a common line; the sparkle in his eyes, though, she knows is hard to fake. “Convince you not to sue?”

She laughs a little, not sure whether to be insulted or flattered. “No, thanks.” She lets the words fall, drop from her lips and shine like the sun behind her smile. “It’s fine.”

She walks away, and notices her Maui Jims on the ground a few feet from her. As she crouches to retrieve them, she sees Edmund approaching the crosswalk, cellphone curled against his palm, the mouthpiece angled away from his cheek -- she can tell by his body language that he’s talking to his mother.

She takes a deep breath and prepares to say what she’s come to say, to tell him, to see what he does – she’s hopeful, but not delusional. She can do this.

She slides her shades on and starts walking before she loses her nerve, relying on momentum to see her through to the finish; her sunglasses aren’t even scratched.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ __

 __  
She doesn’t know why she insists on staying for Edmund’s funeral or why it matters.  
But she tells Mr. Alpert that she needs more time, needs to think about his offer, needs to grieve. For as adamant as he’d been, he’s surprisingly gracious -- tells her to take her time, but to keep in mind that the women she’d be helping need her skills, and that the longer she waits, the longer she leaves them to suffer. To die.

Of course, it’s not in so many words, but the basic gist is clear.

She’s wearing a black skirt that she swears still smells like the last wake she wore it to. She files past the family she’d once stood among, exchanging awkward pleasantries and condolences that sound tired and trite: _I’m sorry this happened, I’m sorry for your loss, I’m sorry.  
_  
 _I’m sorry.  
_  
They’re all staring at her with red eyes -- though not as red as her own -- and she has to look away as she approaches the body, has to dab at the corners of her eyes and stare listlessly at the garden of flower arrangements blossoming behind her ex-grandmother-in-law’s hunched head. She scans the cards, recognizing a few names, a few institutions. A particularly bright, but tasteful spray of bleeding hearts, hyacinths and marigolds catches her eye and stirs her, at first, before it drops like lead in her stomach. She knows what flowers mean.

The card, she finds, only makes matters worse:

 _Deepest Condolences, Mittelos Bioscience  
_  
And her mind goes, without her consent, to the dark places -- remembers the jagged pieces and the missing shards, the blood and the bones at odd, unseemly counterpoints, and...

And she wished for this. Asked for it. Said it allowed without thinking, without knowing, without _meaning_ ; she’d said the words.

When she comes upon the casket, barely seeing the stiff pallor of the man she used to love, her lungs start to burn and her eyes start to sting and she knows she has to get out of there.

She did this.

She tries for the corner room with the pastries and the coffee -- typical comfort food for the masses in mourning -- but the cloying sweetness, the smell of cigar smoke that pervades is heady, blinding, and she has to retreat.

She’s alone on the terrace of the establishment, save for two elderly gentlemen she doesn’t recognize -- who look like Edmund’s mother, in the face -- and she breathes; just breathes like it’s the hardest thing, a shameful thing. She’s watching the sky like it has the answers, like it can whisper to her in the kind of sacred tongues that will make sense of everything, when nothing in her world makes any sense.

Her chest feels tight and constricted, like something bigger than her is pressing down. She brings a palm to her chest, but can’t make out the individual beats in the flutter of her heart, and she feels dizzy for a dangerous second, leans against the siding of the building and fans herself a bit, tries to come back down and steady herself, but the innocent shadows of her sinful hands blocking the sun, casting the dark; she sighs, feels the air press hard at the hollow of her throat, the exhale strangling for one blissful, fleeting moment where she gets to dream, gets to drown. And the coastal air, it’s sweet -- and it turns her stomach, prickles behind her eyelids, and she can feel her heartbeat in her temples as she staves off tears that she doesn’t understand; that taste like salt and heat and guilt on her tongue without ever falling; never falling.

She turns, stares, sees the people through the windows: the fixed frowns that aren’t quite frowns -- the ones who laugh with misty eyes as they recall something silly, something stupid, so _stupid_ , about Ed when he’d been young. When laughter had mattered.

She swallows hard, can’t get past the way her throat tightens, closes, chokes; her hands are gripped around her keys before she’s leaving, and all she can think -- beyond all the things she cannot _think_ \-- is that she didn’t sign the guestbook when she first walked in.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ _  
_

She doesn’t pay any mind to where she’s going, where her feet are taking her; her mind is elsewhere, and she can’t afford to dwell, doesn’t have the will to bring it back to the here and now just yet. She doesn’t spare much attention to the dull roar behind her thoughts as she walks into the bar. It’s a small, crowded establishment that she’d had to enter on more than one occasion to drag Ed home on a Sunday night, lest a hangover keep him from work in the morning.

The air she breathes tastes acrid, acidic, and it burns her already-raw throat, making it hard to order her tequila -- something cheap and dirty that sears the feeling away on the first shot and stings with each successive drop, saturating her slowly to the point of incapacity, of implosion; again, again until she drowns.

The neon glow of vintage bar signs -- only half of the brews in lights matching those on tap -- and it figures, she thinks bitterly, picking at her cuticles as she waits for her drink: life’s a whole fucking sequence of pretty packaging and false advertising.

She leans against the counter. The angle is awkward and unpleasant; the edge digs into her chest as she slouches, shivers, pinching her skin when she reaches across the bar and motions for more -- and even as she can only smell bar sugar and the sharp scent of fruit wafting from the line of vodkas at the wall beyond, she catches the stale stench, the formaldehyde in the beer on tap, and she smells cedar, pine; something old in the peeling, aged wood her toes push against -- she inhales it, can’t expel it, and it rolls in her stomach like a tidal wave, angry and quick, and she thinks she might vomit then and there, so she takes the glass and tips it against her lips with a quick flick of her wrist, lets the agony swirl in her head, down her esophagus instead.

She coughs like a lightweight as she swallows bile down quick, slumps again into the stool, legs spread and askew, and she’s dizzy, angry -- everything hurts, and she just wants to go home, go home and wake up where nothing is different, and the world makes fucking _sense_.

She doesn’t know how long the man at her side -- tall, strong, dark, and handsome enough, she suspects, even without the greasing of the booze -- watches her without her notice; she only pays him any mind when he decides to lean in close enough that she brushes elbows with him when she lifts her glass. She only gives him a second glance when he speaks, apparently to her.

“You’ll forgive me for saying you look a little worse for wear,” he says with a soft smile, and for all she can’t see straight, for all she should know better, she thinks she reads concern in his eyes, like he might care just a little that she’s alone and toppling over her own shoes.

“You should probably slow down,” he says, and Juliet can smell the alcohol on him, too – whiskey, and it’s old, strong. Her eyes feel strained, bloodshot; a Pixies song is playing in the background, and she’s only just holding back tears.

Slowing down’s the last thing she needs.

So she orders them both another, and he shuts the fuck up until the words coming out of his mouth make less sense, and mean more.

“Do you ever just,” and his eyes glaze so that the red fluorescents in the Budweiser sign shine opaque in his eyes, clears as he blinks, nothing to do with the glass in his hands. The way his chest expands against the soft silk of his shirt steals the air that clings to the corners of the room, makes it hard to breathe, to be. “Do you ever think about your life,” he pauses, lifts the lip of his scotch to his mouth, swallows with a shudder of his Adam’s apple, like it’s just as uncertain, just as uneasy as the stutter in his voice; “and just say... this isn’t it?”

His lips shine with the burn of ice and alcohol, slick against the skin, and she thinks about lying, thinks better of it.

“Every single day.”

He downs what’s left of his drink, and there’s a pact there, a solidarity, so she does the same. “Another round,” he murmurs like it’s an affirmation, like has meaning -- his hair dangling in front of his face as he gestures to the both of them; his vowels slurring, though she’s shocked she can still tell.

They stay until last call -- by which point neither of them are talking much, their tongues too loose and their lips too stung; she lets secondhand nicotine smooth down the frays of her nerves as she slowly wanders out of the bar, the man’s hand at her waist -- for direction and balance. She never asked his name, she realizes through a fog, and she kind of wants to, except she doesn’t; it’s a bit late for that, now.

“You can go,” she says suddenly -- doesn’t expect the words when they tumble from her mouth -- and it takes too long, the syllables heavy against her lazy tongue; “Thanks for, for...” she drawls, points, gestures, flails; breathes. “That.”

“Hey,” he murmurs, almost hums, his hand darting out to catch her arm as she turns -- only she isn’t turning, just... moving, because everything is tilting and spinning, and it feels right to be swept along with the momentum of it all, the surge before the fall. “You’re headed in my direction,” he breathes, slow, like it’s a chore. “Let me walk with you.” She doesn’t look at him, doesn’t acknowledge the offer for what it is, what it might be.

“World’s a harsh kinda place,” he adds, not all there, eyes far away; “no reason not to help each other on the way.”  
 _  
_She looks at him, eyes glazed and the light brutal, piercing as it hits his features, casts them in relief; kissing him seems like a wonderful idea, and it hurts to contemplate it longer than for that perfect, swelling instant, so she doesn’t think. Only wants.  
 _  
_He’s too far gone to stop her, she can tell when the streetlamp glows against his pupils and there’s a weight in the pit of her stomach that tells her they’re both beyond the point of saying no.  
 _  
_The danger in that, though, doesn’t register -- the moonlight waxes, and it’s less that she doesn’t think, so much that now she simply _can’t_. __

__So she simply leans, careful to keep her balance, and tastes instead.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ _  
_

She barely sees the route they take, barely notices when it veers off path toward places unknown -- doesn’t remember that this stranger had absolutely no idea where she lives. She can’t smell past the smoke from the bar on her skin, can’t taste past both their last drinks turning stale, mingling on her tongue. She can’t feel past the ache, and the lingering guilt that there may be one less soul in this world because of her own selfish needs -- a guilt and an ache that dampen to a moan when his hand brushes her on the way, and it keeps her feet from freezing, her knees from giving out. She can’t see where this is going, but she can guess; she already knows the tang of regret, bitter at the back of her throat, and she figures she’s already too far gone to worry much about making it worse, digging her hole any deeper; there’s no point arguing between the circles of hell, when it’s all fire and ash, either way.

So she doesn’t gag at the acid that creeps up and tries to choke her, doesn’t taste the warning that laps against her teeth. She doesn’t heed the shiver, the shudder that tickles her spine for what it’s worth, what it means; and if she feels the racing of her heart, sharp and quick, laced with fear, she pretends that she doesn’t, and it’s enough.

She hears things, though; hears _everything_.

She hears the key turn in the lock, the stark click of heels she’s owned for years, worn and scuffed at the toes, hitting rough and unforgiving concrete, then carpet; the house seems sparse, sterile from the glimpse she catches before he turns to her with eyes hungrier than the devil for her soul, and she wonders for a moment -- a moment, and no more -- why he’s here; if he’s as out of place as his accent in the heat outside, the heat that inches in between them where they stand.

She hears the way his breath leaves his lungs in a quick, violent sort of hurry, like it’s trying to get somewhere, like it’s already ahead of itself as the swell of her chest brushes innocent, shameless against the flat plane of his pecs. His neck bows, and his lips come closer, and she’s desperately aware of the sound of her heart, of the quick-fire gallop of its rhythm as his mouth misses hers, teases lower at the line of her clavicle, teeth scraping swift and subtle, unrefined against the jut of bone, the flush of skin.

She hears the tension, or what was left of it, snap like plastic, shatter like glass as her hands reach for his waist; hears the steady, frantic, angry drone of her pulse urging her on, urging her to stop, to nip here, moan -- fuck -- palm there, fingertips grappling, desperate at the fly of his Dockers, the buckle of his belt. The pull, the tear of the hem of her blouse is drowned out by the sharp inhales of breath, the feathery, billowing rustle of it alighting on the hardwood floors silenced as he backs her into the wall, as she shivers at the sudden cold, feels her nipples harden in the cups of her bra as she leans hard against him on the impact until she can feel his give against her curves, his lines against her gaps.

She hears the pin-drop of the button that comes loose from its thread as she pulls greedy, selfish, until she can see the barest peek of chest hair, and her hands are sloppy, messy as she unbuttons the rest of his shirt, slipping it blind from his shoulders while his lips suck at the pulse hammering at her throat, drinking the rhythm like wine. She breathes in loud against his hair, smells Axe and salt and the smoke of the bar mixed with the smoke on his tongue -- cheap cigarettes against Cuban cigars, and she suddenly realizes with a surge of warmth in the pit of her stomach that this is something different, something new.

Something terrifying. Something like the last taste of life before death. Or maybe after death. She isn’t sure.

She wraps her legs around him, hears the creak of her joints like a firecracker, like the rustle of silk beneath the ways her chest heaves, her lungs burn, her knees bracing, curling around his hips, the skin of her thighs slick with sweat and catching, pulling against the varnished maple, polish oak, granite next to the refrigerator as the line of her spine slips, smacks hard against cold metal sends shivers counterpoint to the ones spreading out from her core, hot and wet between her legs.

She can hear the ice maker grinding out cubes between the thump of her heart against her ribs, between the shaky rush of waves, of breath between lips too swollen, too smooth, laced with grief and wanton need like sweet poison, like divine retribution for the kind of sins she’s only ever dreamt of making her own.

His fingers dance beneath her skirt, play at the lines of her panties like his caress alone might move them, move her; and it does, long before he hooks a patient finger close between the pull of elastic and the stretch of her skin, tugs them down to her knees. They’re around her ankles in an instant as the pads of his fingers tease at her opening, cool and thick against the fire stirring in her veins, and she can hear the hum of electricity from within and without, she can feel weightless as the world comes crashing down.

She murmurs secrets she doesn’t know, words she can’t understand; she can only hear them, their echos, their residue, and when the lights die, surge, explode and perish behind eyes that want to see but can’t, won’t watch what it is she’s doing, what she’s making of herself -- unmaking of herself; when the universe goes dark again and she shudders in the comedown, she can hear nothing.

She can feel his breath against her shoulder-blade, though; his eyelashes sharp, drawing tiny lines between her freckles; the tenting in his boxers, where she’d only managed to get the zipper down on his pants, and before she can move to return the attention, something seems to snap in him; his eyes wide and clear for an instant as his fingers still, before the haze returns, fever-bright and almost mad.

He eases her down without preamble, and she can hear the heavy fall of her feet on the tile, like the wake of infinity, eternity, crashing upon her like the hand of the Almighty; she glances to the door she’d entered through, the choice she’d never even thought to make before this hellish, blissful night. She glances to the door adjacent, cracked-open enough to see a glow, to see the promise of the stars that live elsewhere, that have abandoned this place, this inferno.

She doesn’t pause to think, to wonder, to fight the urge to run, and maybe that’s the clincher, what sends bile up her throat and softness through her chest, out against her skin as she runs an open palm against the bare flesh of his arm; she’s a different woman in this instant, in this space between breaths, than she was in the last. Than she was a minute ago, an hour ago, a day ago, than she’s ever been before.

Than she’ll ever be again.

She hears the groan of old mattress springs that have known too many nameless, faceless encounters like this, have held up beneath enough naked bodies and racing hearts to know that this was fleeting, to protest before bleeding back into the ether, into the world that existed beyond this night.

The world, and the people they were within it.

The room feels alive, violent around her, and she can almost hear the way it whispers, tears her down as she frays at the seams with every thrust, every slap of flesh on unfamiliar flesh, and she can’t tell whether she’s crying, or if it’s just the sweat dripping from her hairline when she taste salt on her lips, on his when he comes up for air and kisses her rough, like this matters more than a quick pity fuck for the sad girl at the bar.

She cannot believe that she’s been reduced to the sad fucking girl at the end of the sad fucking bar.

Except that she can. She can absolutely believe it.

She watches, still, hears the tear of the wrapper as he rolls a condom over his hardened length; his hands gather at her back and lift her into him as he slides into her and she gasps, eyes clenched shut as she tries, succeeds in losing herself in the way he thrusts, the way she clenches, groans around him -- the curve of his neck, the jut of his chin as his head tosses back. They find a generic sort of rhythm -- nothing fancy or certain, nothing perfect or pleasing, but it scratches an inch they’re both desperate to satisfy, and so the sensation of it is heightened, trembling between their thighs and reaching fever pitch as they slam together with the wet slap of flesh on flesh.

She hears the way his breath hisses, catches between clenched teeth, feels the hot rush of him as he peaks and spills like the heavens in mourning, and suddenly she knows what’s different about the taste of tears.

She’s glad for the darkness, now; the moonlight, though, she resents.

He collapses on her, pulls out with his hips, but keeps his torso lined against hers, pressed hard; the underwire of her still-hooked bra digs hard against her rib. He doesn’t say anything, and her mouth’s too dry to speak; she hears his breath rush heavy, steady, and then slow as he drifts, and she feels everything in her tighten, feels nausea build in her stomach, where his thighs spread around her, his soft cock trapped between them; and _Jesus_ , she feels as used as Edmund had ever made her feel, in life or in death.

And it’s her fault; it’s her fucking fault.

She doesn’t remember how she gets out, how she gets home; that fact alone drives her close to tears. She drops her keys three times trying to get into her place, her hands are shaking so badly; she scrapes the paint off her front door in missing the keyhole, for the salt in her eyes.

She sleeps on the couch that night, too sullied for her own sheets.

The morning comes sooner than she can bear; she doesn’t pull the blinds with the dawn, and she doesn’t go back for the service. She’d thought, at first, that she would need the closure; in truth, over the buzzing in her ears and the throbbing in her head, it’s best she stays away.

For years, Edmund had made her feel worthless, and yet, six feet underground, she’s finally managed to sink lower than even him.

Maybe one day, she’ll visit the grave.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
 _  
_  
Of all the countless things that amaze Juliet about her sister, she’s never gotten over the fact that no matter what was happening -- no matter what she was running from, hiding from -- Rachel never failed to make her feel loved, feel safe. The world was just a nightmare, and if she blinked long enough, hard enough, it would disappear for good.

It takes her until the next day to drag herself from her house and slip the spare key from the molding around Rachel’s door. The apartment is deserted, and Juliet allows herself to fall upon the sofa without consideration for the papers and unopened mail she sends flying from the end table in her wake; she moans against the cushion, breathes in the scent of home that lingers around the perfume her sister wears -- the perfume their mother always wore -- and lets the fabric collect what stray tears she has left as she drifts off to a restless, dead sort of sleep without room for recovery, or for dreams.

When she does wake, it’s with the kind of start that sends her whole body into the kind of strain that seizes and clenches in her chest as she takes a heavy breath. She rolls over onto her side, wary of the edge of the couch, and she blinks to clear the fog from her eyes; the bright spot of neon green just above her, stuck against the ledge of the side table, slowly takes form, angles, the words emerging on the Post-It from a haze:

 _Didn’t want to wake you. Bringing back lunch. ~R  
_  
With a groan, she snatches the note from its place and sits up straight, with some effort, scrubbing her face violently with the heels of her palms in a futile attempt to rouse herself, to take the edge off of... everything. She glances around, sees unloaded bags of groceries littering the island in the kitchen, and rises unsteadily to her feet, shuffling in to put the food away in hopes of doing something productive, mundane; to take her mind off of the things that hadn’t been blurred away by the hangover she was _still_ feeling, beyond all reason.

She alphabetizes the cereals and arranges the cheeses in the refrigerator drawer by region, orders the salad dressings in the door by how full and how fattening they are before she decides that sitting back on the couch might be her best bet. She draws shapes with her fingers against the worn suede of the sofa, fingertips tracing hearts and stars and spirals that mean nothing -- everything. They are so much more sinister in her mind than they have any right to be -- all corners and points, endless coiling chasms and split centers that leave jagged halves. She flattens her palms against them, frowning as she rubs them clean in one fell swoop; if only all things were so easily undone.

It’s too quiet, she thinks; too quiet. She’d come here to get away, true, but she’d come here to be with _Rachel_ , and she bites her lip against the sudden well of emotions that threatens to burst from her chest at the petulant, desperate, _needy_ sensation of simply wanting her sister there to make everything okay.

Because Rachel always fixed things, always kept her whole and on her feet, even when she was about to crumble. _God made sure there were two of us_ , she’d always say, stroking Juliet’s hair and tucking the rebellious bits, the strays, behind her ear with delicate care, with an understanding that transcended everything she knew. _So we’d never have to be brave on our own.  
_  
She leans farther into the arm of the couch, more dependent on its support. Her eyes fall onto Rachel’s modest DVD collection, just a few discs here and there amidst worn cassettes in their battered cardboard sleeves. She shuffles over to the shelf aimlessly, at first, but sees the first one, pink and black and white, and she can’t fight the little smile that warms her, numbs the shame and the hurt and the sore, throbbing reminder of _everything_ , as she runs her fingertips over the lettering of the title, the smooth plastic of the case’s spine. She doesn’t think twice before snapping the case open and sliding it into the player below the television.

She dozes and drifts, comes to just as Julia Roberts picks apart a croissant and jabbers on with her mouth open; bites through a pancake that flops through the spaces between her fingers, Juliet hears the doorknob turn, the latch release -- she smells the tang of horseradish and mustard that only her favorite deli manages just so before Rachel’s head pops through the doorway.

Rachel opens her mouth to say something as she closes the door behind her, but her eyes trail to the television as the scene changes, and Richard Gere crowds the frame.

“Ooo,” she lets out in a low sort of hum as she swings the bag in her hands with a little flourish. “That bad, huh?”

Juliet chuckles wetly, wiping at her reddened face -- raw with the imprint of her sleeve against her cheek -- with the neck of her shirt as Rachel walks toward her, the ritual of it second nature by now, like an instinct: they’d watched this together at their aunt’s house when the divorce got nasty, had weathered heartbreaks and hardships until the VHS tape had worn out, stretched until the picture was grainy and the dialogue strained. When Juliet had first found out that Edmund was cheating on her, Rachel had held her as she cried, fed her ice cream and hummed the film’s signature song in her ear like it’d been written for Juliet alone: pretty woman. After her first chemo session, Juliet had moved in with her sister for the worst of the treatments, keeping the disc in the player as she let it run from start to finish, over and over, through many a sleepless night.

This is _their_ movie.

“I got you pastrami and provolone.” She reaches from behind to hand Juliet the plastic-wrapped sub, but doesn’t sit back down; simply stands at Juliet’s back, leaning down against the couch, rubbing comforting circles into the curve of her neck, the jut of her shoulder blades; “though if I’d known things were this ugly, I’d have gotten you the ham and cheddar, too.”

Juliet smiles at that -- leans in to Rachel’s hand on her shoulder; lets her cheek trap the touch at her neckline and presses her lips to her older sister’s knuckles; grateful. Rachel reaches around to squeeze her opposite arm reassuringly, flipping the palm against her face to stroke tenderly down Juliet’s jaw as she draws her closer, bends down to kiss at Juliet’s forehead, the tip of her nose dragging slow through matted, sweaty locks as she just holds Juliet near, lets them both be for a moment; necessary. Still.

“I’ll make us some tea,” she breaks the silence after a beat, kissing the top of Juliet’s head as she straightens and retreats to the kettle that never leaves the stove, leaving Juliet with the distraction of celluloid and her own thoughts. Watching the film this time, she’s seeing less of the fairytale and more of the filth than she’s ever noticed, ever cared to see; the seedy underbelly that hits too close to home after... _after_.

“Does the Celestial Seasonings box say anything of note?” she calls out, suddenly a little desperate to affirm she isn’t alone.

There’s a shuffle, the crunch of the packet of teabags inside as she flips the box, and Juliet smiles, because she does love her sister, so much. “We are the causes of our own suffering,” Rachel’s voice floats in a deep falsetto that doesn’t quite work with her natural pitch, would make it that much more amusing, if Juliet was in the mood to catch the humor -- if the words didn’t pierce reality with quite so much sting. “Coming to us courtesy of the Awakened One himself: The Buddha.”

She fights a cynical snort, for fear of the tightness in her throat turning it into a sob. “Wise words.”

She can smell the brew strengthen into a humid haze behind her, tendrils looming closer as Rachel carries two mugs into the living room, leaves their cups to steep on the coffee table at their feet. Juliet reaches for the nearest remote, but it’s one for the movie, not the television volume; she groans at the recollection that Rachel’s never gotten rid of a controller in her entire life, and Juliet will have to sort the nondescript collection of them in the end table drawer in order to find what she’s after.

The crackle of Rachel unwrapping her meal rasps counterpoint to the clank of plastic as Juliet mills through RCA, Toshiba, Sony remotes from the early 90s onward -- some of these had to be from Rachel’s college days, and she can’t help but roll her eyes at her sister’s mild hoarding tendencies as she searches for something that looks new. She doesn’t expect the bulky cardboard box her fingers find shoved near the back of the drawer, behind the manuals and some stray coasters.

She slides it to the front, over the rubbery buttons of too many useless controllers, and barely has to see the Widmore logo before she recognizes exactly what’s in her hands.

“Is this?” she asks half a question that already has an answer; lifts the box, shakes it carefully in Rachel’s direction -- watches as too many emotions flicker across her sister’s features in too few seconds as she sees what Juliet is holding.

“Umm, yeah.” The words are muffled around a bite of her lunch, as her cheeks redden and she sets her sandwich aside. “I kept it.” She reaches out, and Juliet relinquishes her hold on the pregnancy test without a moment’s pause, the open end of it bending at the flaps. “I’d put it there, after I showed it to you,” and Juliet remembers it, like yesterday -- the relief of it; happiness, for an instant, like she’d never know before. “Because it was out of the way, but kind of close.” She clears her throat, turns the box in her hand but doesn’t look inside. “I guess I just never got around to moving it, with everything...”

She trails off, and she blinks too quickly; the tears that gather in her eyes won’t fall, Juliet knows, but there’s an unmistakable pang that trills in her nonetheless at the sight of them. “Is that really weird?” Rachel asks, and she sounds small; Juliet breathes deep, and knows, like something innate, what to do.

 _God made sure there were two of us_ _so we’d never have to be brave on our own.  
_  
“No.” And the single word is short, certain; there’s no more feeling in it than there needs to be to convey it as undisputed truth. She leans into Rachel’s shoulder -- a casual sort of contact that lasts only a second -- a show of solidarity that isn’t overly sentimental, but that Juliet can see makes all the difference, as Rachel’s eyes begin to clear and her lips relax into a contented sort of smile.

“That's not weird.” Juliet leans forward over the coffee table and takes a bite of her food to hide the spread of her own little grin; she lets her hand settle on Rachel’s knee and squeeze to say the things that words can’t manage.

And suddenly, for all the turmoil in her -- all the weight that’s bearing down -- the world doesn’t seem quite so bleak, after all.


	2. Chapter 2

There is a cafe near the corner of Second and Twenty-Fifth where the lattes cost more than Starbucks’ because someone actually whips the crème atop your macchiato by hand. When she and Edmund had first moved to the city, she’d stumbled upon it by accident while searching for an ATM, thirsty and worn by perpetual heat. She’d ordered an iced cafe mocha, paid with her debit card -- for the elusive ATM seemed somehow far away, forgotten -- and she’d let the dip of her spine sink low against the spindles of a chair worn by love, not by care, older than her mother’s mother. The sweat behind her knee had slid smooth as she’d crossed her legs and lifted her cup, drinking until the cubes clacked at her teeth.

She’d asked Edmund to meet her there, once; he’d made a scene about lipstick on his cup that she couldn’t see, and skim milk in the place of his two-percent, which she couldn’t taste. She never went back.

She thinks there’s more to the fact that she ends up there now than she’s interested in sorting through, more reason to walk through those doors than just craving and thirst, but she does it anyway, and if it doesn’t quite feel like shackles dropping from her wrist when she orders, at least she breathes a little freer.

She finds the same chair she remembers -- the paint a little thinner, with a few more chips and less color than she recalls. The soft, pseudo-jazz alternates slow and effortless, almost against its own will, spilling melodies into harmonies back to melodies anew. Her heart slows and speeds in time with it, coursing the caffeine through her veins. She closes her eyes and hums a few pieces she knows, half-knows, smirks to herself when she misses the notes, and when she’s done with her first drink, she saunters slow, her hips swaying with the cadence of the song, as she goes to buy another.

She finds a bookshelf near the back before she sits again in her chair -- more for show than anything more practical, she suspects, but that doesn’t mean she can’t break the trend. She runs her fingertip across tattered volumes -- first editions, most of them, or else she suspects -- opens a few to check for dedications and little notes, isn’t entirely disappointed: _On your birthday, with my love_ , written in one, a snippet of poetry and a name in another. She doesn’t stop to read any actual text until she comes across a familiar title -- one her sister had always loved, had read aloud once or twice when they were young and shared a room.

On an impulse she pulls it out, flips through it: dog-eared, spine cracked so unrepentantly as to resemble a barcode, worn paper frayed at the edge of every crease, pages wafting of cumin and disuse. Her fingers feel dry against the fragile pages, abrasive against the yellowed edges, chipping off with the curse of decay.

She takes a sip of her coffee and takes the book back to her chair in the sun, flips to the beginning: 

_Nobody was really surprise when it happened, not really, not at the subconscious level where savage things grow.  
_  
She loses herself in the story, doesn’t notice the hours pass, or when the light she reads by fades from the sun to the fixtures overhead; she doesn’t stop until a young girl with braided pigtails and an eyebrow piercing taps her shoulder and tells her they’ve been closed for an hour, and she needs to lock up.

She walks home, and finds herself again. She takes a Tylenol PM and falls into bed with her clothes still on; she decides that losing is the better bargain, sometimes -- this time.

 _  
_~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
 __

 __It’s a combination of HR failure and clerical errors that results in Edmund’s office being left unattended to before his family flies back to L.A. How the food chain manages to trickle down to her, in the end, is beyond her comprehension, but it’s nothing she’s never done before; when he’d decided to leave her, she’d had to pack his belongings for him. He was far too busy.

It’d be painfully ironic, really, if it weren’t still so surreal.

Most of his possessions are generic enough to leave and allow someone else to deal with -- office supplies, medical texts, and the like. As a sort of parting gift, she takes the external hard drive attached to his desktop and vows to erase all of its contents: she may still be bitter, but the pornography she imagines takes up a good percentage of its disk space is something his former colleagues never need to see.

The rest is predictable: certificates and degrees that line the walls, disks and notebooks, personal contact files, a few scattered photographs from his desk -- more to cater to convention than to actually savor the memories captured on film. All of it fits in a Hammermill box; the lid even fits on the top. 

She’s smiling at Linda, the overqualified RN who works the front desk, over the bowed head of a patient who’s signing in as she pushing out against the revolving door, turned around as her back hits the glass.

She never sees the man who runs into her, knocks the box from her hands and sends her nearly skidding to the ground.

She doesn’t let herself think too much about the surge, the spark that shoots up her spine when she feels strong hands wrap at her hip, at her waist, pulling her up and putting her back in balance.

“I’m so sorry,” she says, standing still for a moment as she regains her bearings and dusts off her skirt. “Are you alright?”

“Fine,” the man replies, and his voice is nice: warm and strong and a little bit rough, a unique sort of scratch to it that rushes through her like a pleasant memory. “It was my fault. I should have been paying better attention.”

“No, it was me, I...” She sees the box lid blow in a sudden gust of breeze, dangerously close to being subsumed in the water and rendered soggy and useless. She holds up a finger to the stranger and jogs to save it from a watery end.

“Here,” she hears as she straightens, box top in hand, and he’s there, holding the box in his arms for her to close with the lid. She smiles her and takes it back from him.

“Thanks,” she says, and there’s something about the exchange that feels stilted, and a little too much like déjà vu. 

“No problem,” he answers, smiling again, and he looks at her strangely -- it’s not just her this time. He’s staring, almost leering, a narrowness about his eyes that she doesn’t understand, and therefore cannot trust.

“Do I know you?” he asks just as she’s about to make a hasty retreat; she must look as surprised as she feels, because he quickly doubles back. “Sorry, that’s awkward isn’t it?” and that smirk turns sheepish and melts her, just a little; it overrides the tension of his eyes on her before. “It’s just, you look... very, _very_ familiar.”

She takes a moment to consider him, because now that he mentions it, yeah -- there’s something about him that somehow she knows. “Juliet,” she finally says, hefting the weight of the box onto the crook of one elbow as she reaches out and offers her free hand.

His grip on hers is strong, and it’s only after she memorizes the feel of his hands in her own that she let’s go processes the name he offers in kind. “Nathan.”

And his grin spreads, slow like sunlight after dawn, and warms her just the same.

“We…” His eyes brow quirks as he pauses, jerks, and narrows his gaze at her, considering. “We’ve run into each other before,” he finally says, gesturing at the cement ledges around the fountain just behind them, and suddenly it dawns on her, and she recalls his smile -- the way the sun cast his shadow to her left, her sunglasses flung to straddle the cracks in the pavement at their feet: she remembers the things that got lost in what came after that day; how the world -- _her_ world -- changed, after.

“Yes,” she says, and even she can tell that his voice sounds distant; she clears her throat and tosses a smile that’s only half genuine -- but still only half faked -- to cover her tracks. “Yes,” she forces out a pithy bit of laughter; “so we have.”

“Are you any more inclined to be bribed out of legal action this time around?” he asks playfully. She chuckles again, this time incredulously, until she sees that he might just be a little bit serious underneath the jibe. She starts to protest -- because this time, she’s pretty sure that it’s her fault they collided, and besides: no harm, no foul -- but he holds up his hand and cuts in before she can sneak a word in edgewise. “Mind you, if you turn me down again,” he tacks on, a little bit conspiratorially, “I’ll be forced to wait around until you come this way again, and run into you just to be sure that the third time’s not a charm.”

She bites out a laugh and raises an eyebrow, moving just a hair so that his silhouette blocks out the sun. “Persistent, hmm?”

“I prefer tenacious, myself,” he grins back at her, and his smile -- it’s wide and bright and familiar, somehow; like she’s hardwired to know it, to feel like it’s right. “But persistent also fits the bill.”

She doesn’t consider for long -- doesn’t dwell on the implications, the connotations or consequences, all the reasons why she shouldn’t. None of them seem very relevant, given the givens. “Fine,” she concedes, if a bit reluctantly, readjusting the box beneath both of her arms. “Let me leave these with the front desk. They owe me the favor.”

He looks down, nodding at the load she’s carrying. “Moving out?”

She takes a moment to pick up on the question that’s underneath. “Oh, not like that,” she defends quickly, not wanting him to get the wrong impression about the state of her current employment; “I’m,” and she pauses, because what does she have to prove to this man? She doesn’t have to convince him of her professional worth, her position. She doesn’t have to impress him.

“Actually,” she starts again, “moving on, I hope.” And the small smile that tugs at her lips as she says those words -- more honest than anything else she’s said; this time, her smile is real.

“Then how about we start with moving on to lunch,” he redirects gently, but his expression seems brighter, a reflection of her own, “as a precursor to your going about and moving on in the grander scheme of things, shall we?”

The dampened parts of her that still want to refuse are silenced for good as her stomach growls, too quiet for him to hear, but loud enough to prompt a blush. She leaves Edmund’s effects with Linda, and faces forward this time as she pushes through the door.   
__

__~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

They end up at a tiny Chinese place tucked away in the crevices of the city -- Rachel had found it years ago, and Juliet had only been there once or twice, before Rachel got sick and the smell of pork lo mien started to make her feel nauseous. She’s never been here without her sister; doesn’t know why she suggests it now, lets him offer his driver -- his own _driver_ and his Rolls fucking _Royce_ \-- to take them there, particularly when it’s barely a ten minute walk, and there’s a gorgeous breeze coming off of the coast.

She doesn’t know much, really.

“So, what brings you to Miami?” she asks once they’re seated, with the kind of aloofness that comes off as stagnant and rehearsed, that echoes of practice in front of a mirror, watching her lips form the words against the low light of the city, the dying life as it streams in through the open door at her back, through tacky neon window-paint declaring half-priced lunch buffets and specials on moo goo gai pan. “Business or pleasure?”

“Business,” he answers, and his voice is lost inside the swirl of incense, the lingering scents of green tea and soy sauce lowering the words, burying them in musk, and curling them into something delicate, sensual and intoxicating in ways they shouldn’t be, in ways they aren’t. She can feel his eyes on her as she drives the edge of her spoon into the wontons floating in her soup, cutting them haphazardly into halves, into fourths. “But that doesn’t mean that pleasure won’t catch me unawares while I’m here.”

She’s been out of the game for a while now, but she knows it’s not just the musk of jasmine and peanut oil that lets the comment linger, lets it smack of a come-on.

She sips at the water in her glass, cringes at the feel of too much condensation clinging to her skin when she sets the cup back down into the ring of wetness it had left in its wake. “So I take it the city’s been kind to you so far?” she asks idly, trying to discreetly dry her hands upon the thighs of her chinos.

“You sound surprised.” He quirks an eyebrow, and her palms still near her knees beneath the table. It hadn’t been her intention, but it wasn’t an unfounded observation. Particularly since she’d finalized her divorce, she’d wondered what in the hell she’d seen in Miami that was fitting enough, appealing enough to end up calling it home.

“I am.” And he chuckles; she doesn’t. But it doesn’t serve to temper his amusement, the way his lips curl in genuine good humor -- strangely, she finds he likes that simple fact, the way his little snort of enjoyment rings out alone, unabashed.

There’s something free in that sound, and she finds herself aching with it, wanting to float away on its wings as it fades.

“Cynical,” he observes through a tight-lipped grin as he leans back, throws an arm across the empty length of the booth that stretches out toward the wall. “I can appreciate that.”

She ducks her head a little graciously, and little uncomfortably, masking the strange surge of awkwardness that shoots through her stomach as she shifts, grabs for an egg roll and dips the tip in her dish of sweet and sour sauce; she wonders as she chews, just before she swallows, if there’s any way she can end this odd little encounter before they have the chance to order entrees without seeming completely impolite. 

“Have you always lived in New York?” she asks with a sort of half-interest he seems to overlook, or at the least, not to mind.

“Unfortunately,” he answers with a sigh, and there’s something different, something less flat and more open in him, like seeing through the crack in a wall that hides the ocean, or the sky.

“What about you? Born and bred Miamian?”

“God no,” she laughs, almost snorts. “I just... ended up here.”

“That’ll happen.” And there’s something... commiserating, something that understands inside the words, that unfurls and unwraps and permeates hard and fast through her, through them both. She shudders with the careful, subtle overlay of feeling that descends around her, suffocating and strong, and somehow, as it settles, the tension, the discomfiture that had gotten caught in between them starts to slip into the ether, the tendrils of incense barely-visible in the low light, shining in the shafts of sun that reach back from the front window.

Suddenly, she’s not so keen to leave.

She flags down their waitress with a smile and a raise of her arm to request some sweet and sour chicken and the two orders of fried rice on top of the broccoli pork that Nathan asks her to put in. They parry back and forth in the interim, with mild, almost comfortable periods of silence between, talking about everything and nothing -- maintaining an amiable sort of banter, a careful but friendly exchange while touching on very little that could be construed as personal: the economy, the weather, idle gossip about b-list celebrities and political scandals of the nonpartisan flavor. He rubs her as a Republican, though, so she keeps her liberal leanings to herself. 

She learns that he’s a closet action movie buff, can’t stand Hillary Rodham Clinton, and that he drives a Suburban back home at least occasionally, perhaps when his driver’s on a lunch break. She tells him that she likes to watch Meet The Press on Sundays because Tim Russert reminds her of her uncle Donny and that her eyes are particularly sensitive to light, and as such, she doesn’t know what possessed her to move to the Sunshine State in the first place. She asks him for a favorite movie -- Top Gun, he asks her how she ended up in Florida -- scholarships, and the desire to be as far from the broken threads of her family as she could get, but that bit she keeps to herself; and before either of them is aware of it, their plates are nearly clean, and their checks are set before them. A smattering of individually-wrapped fortune cookies falls to the table, the plastic crackling on impact.

“Come on,” she chides him with narrowed eyes when he grabs for the bill before she can look to see the damage she’s incurred and make a grab for her checkbook.

“No,” he gives a quick, but firm shake of his head. “I told you, I have to sway you against pressing charges,” and somehow, the pretense that he’s attempting to buy her isn’t an annoying one -- somehow hasn’t grown stale just yet. It’s almost endearing.

And it shouldn’t be. But there it is.

“Don’t like your women going Dutch on you, hmm?” she asks slyly, shooting him a pointed glance.

“I don’t like being sued,” he returns with a smile, sliding his credit card under the clip on the tray, covering the total she knows can’t top twenty-five dollars, at the very most. She doesn’t bother a second glance to see his last name embossed in silver; she doesn’t need to know. In a matter of moments, it won’t even matter.

She gives up the fight without much of a fuss; or at least, with less of a fuss than she might make with someone else, and she thinks that might mean something silly and obscure, but probably not. Instead, she grabs for one of the fortune cookies, and pushes the air from it with a hollow pop, breaking the pressed seal of the bag and sliding the cookie out into her palm.

She breaks it in halves, careful not to look at the little slip of paper until the piece is at least in her mouth, sweet against her lips; superstitions and all. _Plant a good seed and you will joyfully gather fruit._ She sucks the slick sugar from the surface of the cookie before she cracks it between her front teeth -- the crumbs trickling down the front of her shirt, a few stragglers tumbling inside the cups of her bra -- and she wonders if it’s like blowing out birthday candles, or wishing on a star; maybe if you say it out loud, it won’t come true.

But then, nothing really comes _true_ , in the end; it only either comes, or it doesn’t.

She turns the paper over and forms her lips silently around the pronunciation for Chinese word for ‘fish’ while Nathan swallows quickly around his own cookie as he thanks the waitress for his card and signs for the charges.

She looks down at her lucky numbers: _8 15 23_. She wonders, for a moment, why there are so few of them. She’s no gambler herself, but she remembers there at least being enough to number to make the Play 4, because Ed had won three hundred dollars on his fortune cookie numbers on their second date. _  
_  
She doesn’t like where that train of thought takes her, though, so she folds the paper once, twice, into a tiny, solid square that she stuffs under the little basket that holds the salt and the soy sauce, leaving it behind as they walk out. She can’t tell whether or not she imagines the weight of a distinctly male gaze on the sway of her hips as she exits, but the thought does cross her mind.

The dimness of the restaurant is intensified, juxtaposed with the midday sun that assaults her retinas as they step outside. She squints carefully, and reaches for her shades, pausing mid-step as she remembers the day they’d first crossed paths; the day that everything had changed.

“Do you need a ride back?” Nathan turns to ask her when she doesn’t move to follow him into the waiting car, his voice sharp somehow, and his eyes invisible, hidden behind the lenses of his Ray-Bans. 

“I think I’ll walk,” she manages, something sour in her mouth even as she forces out a smile she hopes looks genuine -- appears strained only because of the glare; she’d had a nice enough time, after all, when all was said and done.

He considers her for a moment, careful and still, before he ducks to slide into his seat. “It was a pleasure,” he tells her, smacking his lips before he adds her name, like a prayer or a curse, every syllable scant and naked off his tongue: “Juliet.”

The slam of the car door echoes after the engine revs and the vehicle pulls from the curb; she doesn’t think she’ll ever hear her name without the underscoring of his tone in the back of her mind, ever again.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ __

 __  
His car is already around halfway to the nearest corner, the consonants stripped sharp in his voice just starting to fade, when she feels the tap on her shoulder, hears the hushed, heavily-accented ramble of the waitress who’d served them explaining in broken bits that the wallet in her hand had been left in their booth.

Nathan’s wallet.

She doesn’t know what prompts her to take it, to not simply flip open her cell phone and call the number on the license -- New York State. She doesn’t know why she doesn’t try to flag down the car he’d taken off in, or at least try to narrow her gaze against its plates.

She simply notes that his name is Nathan Arthur Petrelli, and thanks the petite woman for coming after her before she turns and walks home.

And later, sitting at her kitchen table, she’s pretty sure it’s justified, really -- looking through to see if she can find enough information to get the wallet back to its rightful owner. She’s sure there’s no real harm to be had in it, but the whole time she sifts through the contents, fingers dry and rough against every small item she finds, she feels a little bit bad, a little bit wrong.

It doesn’t stop her, though.

She catalogs the items as she goes, lining them up in order so that she can put them back exactly as they were: half of a Post-It note -- the sticky part -- ripped and folded over a hardened piece of chewed gum. She can still smell the spearmint.

Gym membership, recently renewed; she probably could have guessed that. She wouldn't deny he was a looker.

A key, pressed so far into the leather that the imprint remains when it pops out; old, given the cut, but rarely used. Still clean, still sharp. It looks like a house key, but something tells her it's more important; less of a spare and more of a secret.

There's a ticket stub from a flight into Miami, two weeks prior, flying with Herarat Aviation, and a receipt from an airport Burger King printed at 3:47 A.M; it makes her wonders, just a little, about whens and wheres and whys.

She fingers a business card -- embossed with a stylized double-helix, his name emblazoned beneath the logo of The Pinehearst Company. Nathan Petrelli. Behind it, she finds an insurance card -- he carries through Aetna; listed as Nathaniel there, and for some reason, she smirks at that. Another name's on the card, as well -- a shared plan, with a Peter Petrelli, obviously his brother, given the age listed. She wonders if their parents hated the boy: Peter _Petrelli_.

All of his card slots are filled, most doubled, some tripled, stretched beyond their capacity and straining at the seams: Visa Black Card, American Express Platinum, a smattering of store cards for various high end retailers. Frequent flyer cards for all of the major airlines: American, Oceanic, Continental, Delta, Northwest, Southwest, Ajira, Herarat, United. Man got around, apparently.

The cash enclosed bloats the bifold dangerously, bilging against the card slots: three Benjamins, crisp and flat, straight from the bank; another two-hundred in twenties; and a good twenty-five in suspicious-looking singles.

She quirks her eyebrow at what falls out when she goes to replace the bills, frowns when she figures out what it is: browned and fragile, but still intact, the four-leaf clover has seen better days, and she finds herself wondering as to its story, pondering different scenarios in her head. She’s surprised that she wants the truth more than the stories, wants the opportunity to ask.

She also sees a thin strip of paper caught against the worn tag sewn into the seam: a fortune, she realizes, still stiff along the halves of the paper, the fold still peaked at the crease. It’s from their lunch, she’s sure of it.

 _Divest your ordinary nature and find your true nature,_ it reads, and it feels heavier than it has any right to. She wonders why he kept it, whether he meant to, whether it was coincidence or something more.

On a whim, she flips the paper over and looks at his numbers: 4 16 42. Only three; he got gypped, as well. _  
_  
With that, she means to close the wallet and call it a night, but the jagged edge of something peeking out from behind his license grabs at her attention and stokes her curiosity violently enough to prompt her thumb into the opening in the plastic screen, and to slide out the laminate and dig for what’s underneath.

She finds a scribbled name on ripped piece of paper -- looks like the back of a receipt -- Paik, and a number with too many digits to be domestic; the country-code is unfamiliar, not that she knows many by heart. The handwriting is strangely loopy for a man's, but too slanted, too sharp for a woman's; sloppy, quick, half print and half script. Scattered. Untethered.

Pushed farther down, there are a few well-worn, moisture-bled fast food coupons folded over too many times and shoved into the change pocket -- expired, months ago; they’re for free drinks with a combo meal and half-priced sandwiches with the purchase of any regularly-priced menu item of equal or greater value. Nothing unusual, but somehow... fascinating. Like secrets spilling for her perusal.

She notes that the number of his license differs from the number on his business card -- of course it does, a work phone and a home phone -- and she doesn’t know why she chooses to call his work line, precisely, but she knows that it’s more than just the logical assumption that, if he’s in Miami, there’s no way he’ll be home to answer her call.

Suddenly, she feels a little tongue tied, a little hesitant and unsure, and how in the hell did you say that last name, anyway? Peter-elli? Pet-relli? Pet-raili? Pete-reel-ee?

"I'm looking for Nathan Petrelli," she says into the mouthpiece, a smile curling her lips before she can think about why it's there, because yes: that sounds right.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
 _  
_  
After speaking with four assistants -- three of whom had seemed to be the assistant of an assistant, or the assistant of the assistant's assistant -- followed by the endearing and open laugh of the Peter who'd been listed on the insurance card (his brother, as she'd guessed), she’d managed to finally reach a male voice she recognized, if only just. They'd arranged to meet after she got off of work; she hadn't told him that the University had granted her the rest of the week off for bereavement, given the unique circumstances. She gives him directions to the little cafe she's come to think of as her own, and he promises to be there by quarter-to-four.

“Had to take a cab, without my license,” Nathan says, sounding a little breathless above the scuff, the squeak of his shoes on the floor -- as if a cab required any exertion on his part; the old-fashioned Ridgeway striking on the decorative mantle near her seat at the window reads 3:54 as she hands his wallet back to him, everything carefully replaced, just as she'd found it.

“Where’s your driver?” She shoots at him smartly, eyebrow quirked as she watches him slide his wallet into his back pocket; deliberately ignoring the subtle curve accented there, disguised by the fine tailoring of his slacks...

“Previously engaged.” She can't help but note the strain of his neck, and the suggestion, the teasing cut of his abs as he shrugs, fidget beneath his jacket.

“How’s their espresso?” he asks, fingers still on the wallet in his pocket as he squints at the menu, focusing on the colored chalk against framed blackboards lining the walls behind the counter.

“Top notch,” she says seriously, raising her cup in affirmation as she leans back into the cushion of his chair, downing the rest of her drink and setting the empty mug on the table between them before she sinks too far into the give. 

“Hmm,” he hums beneath his breath, “want another?”

She takes a moment -- just the one -- to watch him, study the way his face stays open, innocent; she wonders how many people in the world can still look so empty, so untouched. His eyes flutter open, then closed; one, two, three times, his jaw shifting just slightly, the openness starting to narrow, to tighten before she finally decides, responds:

“Sure.”

He smiles, and there are no boundaries to it, no limits; it’s warm, warmer than the drinks or the sun, and squints a little, even as she grins back, because it’s everywhere, that spreading heat, but it’s too much, too soon, and she doesn’t have the time to shield her eyes.

He leans toward her, unexpectedly -- closer than an acquaintance should probably venture, running the tip of his left ring finger through the stiffening foam clinging in porous ledges, ephemeral sills along the edges, the lip of her cup. She can only process the way that the finger curls, crooks, wipes with decided nonchalance against the glazed surface -- bare, unclaimed beneath the knuckle. He seems the type who’d wear a ring, beside the fact that she recognizes the wrinkle of white where something had once wrapped around the skin, kept it safe and in the dark; the divorcées brand was something she was intimately familiar with by now, though hers had finally faded -- though she was the only one who still looked to see if it remained.

She blinks, hard, as the image of Edmund, speaking, striding, swept away in a blur of motion and metal, doppler shift and drops of blood, and when her eyes open again, the gentle, dampish pop of Nathan’s finger sliding out against the side of his mouth -- slipping wet between his lips as he rolls his tongue around his teeth, the movement hollowing and pursing his cheeks in turn; that pop sounds a little dull, a little heavy, falling like meat, dead weight upon the pavement even as it strikes a spark of something in the pit of her stomach.

“Another caramel macchiato, then,” he says, with no small degree of certainty after considering the taste for a long second. “Soy?” he asks, and there’s the hesitance, perhaps surprise -- unguarded, untamed. It doesn’t match the cut of his suit, the sharp lines on his card, doesn’t go with the chauffeur or the assistants -- the haunted mist behind his eyes over crab rangoons that’d had nothing to do with the incense, the heady musk of the establishment itself.

“Nonfat,” she corrects him, and his eyes quirk, their shape strange for a moment before a smirk curls his lips to match.

“Please. Like you need to cut the calories.” She takes it as a compliment, and contents herself with watching the people, the light as it plays through the window panes; she doesn’t spend too many breaths between studying the muddy reflection of him, his back in the glass as he orders, waits, pays.

“This place has... charm,” he declares, breathing deeply as he sets the cups upon the table and stretches his arms back, kinked at the elbows as he shucks his jacket, lets it pool where the back of the chair meets the seat as he slides back on the edges of it, settles down and sweeps his gaze across the whole of the room: the mismatched seating and the streaked glass of the countertops. “I like it.”

“My ex-husband always said it was common. Dirty,” she says, and it’s heavy in her gut, speaking ill of the dead. “I stopped coming here for the longest time.”

“Hmmm,” and Nathan doesn’t know it, but the steady rumble of the sound shakes some of the weight, the guilt free. “Does it taste as good as you remember it?”

She lifts her cup to her lips, tilts it back and lets the liquid burn the insides of her lips, run slow to the back of her throat and slip down, so warm. She inhales through her nose and licks at her lips, savoring the taste, the bitter cut and the milky buffer; the sweet undertone lingers, keeps her coming back for more. “Better.”

“Then, maybe the break was for the best,” he says, a little sagely, full of himself as he dusts invisible crumbs from his thighs. “You know, absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that.” 

“Don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone,” she murmurs in agreement, the words close enough to the surface of her drink to send tiny ripples, little waves through the cream; the heat of it condensing on the tip of her nose as she breathes out, in against the edge of her cup, hiding the hint of her smile against the side.

“Great song,” he comments, the end of his swallow breathy, tacking on an extra, protracted vowel before his words, and even as she glances toward him warily, critically from the corners of her eyes the words have taken up a beat, matching the rhythm he’s idly drumming against his knee.

She says nothing, and he picks up on the silence only after the front door of the cafe swooshes open and accents the lack of conversation; he glances toward her, neck craned over the back of his seat as his eyes meet her own. “No, really,” he protests, an note of protest, childish defense coloring his tone. “I mean, classic hair-metal stuff,” he tags apologetically, “but yeah.”

She snorts gracelessly, but covers it with a quick sip of her coffee. “Don’t tell me you had the whole back-combed look going on, please.”

“Oh, but I did,” he grins, and she’s torn between horrified, as she imagines him with that hair, and a little bit giddy, for the infectiously playful joy that the memory seems to bring him, and the way the white of his teeth peeks winningly from behind his lips. “You’re imagining it, aren’t you?” he accuses with a laugh when she remains quiet; she suspects her eyes give her away, but she doesn’t mind -- she wasn’t trying to be cryptic, wasn’t meaning to hold back.

“Trying not to, actually, but it’s a futile effort,” she confesses with a laugh. “You might have to buy me another one of these to make up for the mental image I’m going to be suffering from for at least the next hour.” She raises her mug indicatively, angling her eyebrows a little reproachfully, though her smile kills the sting. 

“You know?” He takes another drink, eyes glinting with something she can’t quite figure, doesn’t quite know. “I think that can be arranged.”

And when he laughs, she knows just one thing: she likes it.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

“Isn’t this a bit high school?” she asks, the second time they meet for coffee. 

“Maybe,” he says, steepling his fingers at the point of his chin, "But it’s how I met my first girlfriend at Princeton, so maybe we can bump it up to being a bit college and call it square.”

Her arms spread to the sides, propped to the elbows against the back of the overstuffed chair she's sprawled across in the corner. “Fine.”

“Right,” he blinks, as if he'd been expecting more of a fight, and she sees a bit of the boy in him, the one who probably started like this with that first girlfriend in New Jersey, and Juliet can't help herself -- she wonders if she has that girl's eyes, her smile, the same color hair. She wonders if this is like that, or if it's something different. 

“So,” he pulls her from her thoughts, before they can really take hold. “Favorite... vacation spot.” 

“Mmmm, Southern France.” It's out of her mouth before she can think about it, but it's true.

"Ah, le Midi." Other people would have asked more, would have asked when and why she'd managed to lose herself on the Continent for a long summer between undergrad and med school; and it's not as if he doesn't seem to care -- it's more as if he knows, without the asking.

“Favorite song to listen to when you’re driving.”

A smiles curls his lips, a memory washing over his eyes, and there's a light in him, a spark -- like a secret, something lost and then found. “Don’t Stop Believin’. Definitely.” 

She smiles, too; she can see that, in her mind's eye -- his hair, perhaps with the mullet, blowing in the warm breeze as he drives some vintage car that cost his parents more than a Bentley, making his way down the interstate to nowhere, going anywhere.

“Favorite ice cream flavor.”

“Karamel Sutra." She can almost feel the swirl of it on her tongue, melting against her teeth. She knows she's smiling like an idiot, but it's a weakness, Ben & Jerry's; it's a real, vital weakness.

Hers is not a smile like his, however: wolfish, hungry, sly. “Kinky," he comments blithely, and she shoots him a half-hearted glare while she takes an indulgent sip of her coffee, thankful for the abundance of caramel flavoring she'd unwittingly added to her order.

“Favorite poet.”

“Rilke.” And that surprises her, just a little; he doesn't seem uneducated, by any means, but men who know their poetry have always been a bit of a rare find for her outside of English departments and basement slams with three-dollar cover and all-you-can-drink coffee that tastes like morning breath and battery acid and comes in red plastic cups that look like they should hold something stronger.

“The sovereigns of the world are old,” she quotes, a little lofty; to test, to prove, to know.

“And they will have no heirs at all.” And he seems pleased -- with her, and himself -- to finish the line.

She grins again; it's becoming a trend.

“Favorite word.”

She takes a long sip from her cup, takes a moment to close her eyes and savor. “Vivacious.”

“Really?” He sounds genuinely surprised, confused.

“Won an elementary school spelling bee with that word.” She drinks, lets her eyes slide closed again; remembers sweaty palms and her eyes on her patent-leathers and the origins and parts of speech she still knows, but has never actually needed.

It takes her a moment to think of a question beofre her eyes fall on the line of novels along the wall. “Favorite book.”

“A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.” If that doesn't scream hidden layers and inner demons, she doesn't know what does; she can't tell if it's a honest answer, or a canned sort of response -- but either way, it's a good one.

“Favorite color.”

“Periwinkle.” Like the afternoon sky, and it's reflection in the sea.

“Favorite time of year.”

“Summer. The end of summer.” He breathes deep as he leans heavier against the arm of his chair, gaze focused on something beyond themselves, the store, this plane. “Like... the beginning of September.” He turns a soft smile in her direction as his eyes refocus and find her again; it feels comforting, his attention on her with such genuine, subtle, radiant warmth.

“Favorite food.”

“Peach cobbler.” Her grandmother's, and it makes her sad when she realizes she hasn't had it since before she died; her mom had never quite mastered the recipe.

“Favorite..." her eyes dart around between them, trying to draw inspiration, find something... "Shoes.”

He raises an eyebrow at her, stretching his foot toward her and tapping his Rockports indicatively against her calf. “Shoes?”

“I’m running out of ideas.”

“I’m running out of coffee," he counters, raising his mug; he tilts it so that she can see the dregs sloshing up the sides.

“One more,” he says; something glinting in his eyes as he smiles at her -- half-hopeful, half-mischievous, filled with something less than joy, but only just. She spares a glance at the setting sun outside and heaves a sigh.

“Decaf," she concedes, handing her cup to him as he heads to the counter. And there, on his face -- she thinks _that's_ real joy.


	3. Chapter 3

“Spill,” Rachel demands bluntly, settling on the couch next to Juliet, tucking her left leg beneath her and reaching idly to itch at the edge of the scarf wrapped above her ears. Juliet, for her part, opens her eyes wide and lets her lips turn up as her lashes flutter, as she traces the flowers on the silk with her gaze, noting the promising way that little, fledgling strands peek out from the fold of fabric at her sister’s temple.

“Don’t pretend there’s not something going on with you, Julie.” Rachel’s the only one who can still call her that without prompting her to roll her eyes in disgust -- it’s the last thing she remembers before her parents’ split: _‘Be strong, Julie,’_ her dad’s voice against her ear and her tears at his neck. “I know you too well, remember?”

“It’s nothing,” she protests half-heartedly after a pause, a time to collect herself as the sun beats down on her from the open window, as she glances to the mantle clock and notes the time -- if she hadn’t canceled to catch up with her sister, she’d be meeting Nathan in half an hour.

She rolls her neck, tries to fight the way something tugs from the inside, insistent and unsettled in her joints: she writes it off to repetition, routine -- nothing more.

Rachel doesn’t miss it, though; doesn’t understand the weight in the way she fidgets, but knows it means something, even if she doesn’t quite know what.

Not that Juliet’s all that sure, herself.

“There’s just this...” and she stops, partially because of the fact that she’s not quite sure what to call Nathan, exactly -- not quite a friend, really, but then what else fits the bill? “This guy,” she settles with, inadequate as it may be, “that’s all.”

“A guy?” And Rachel, she looks like a completely different woman, her skin glowing and her face fuller, healthy with the grin that stretches her cheeks. “What kind of guy?”

“Just a guy?” Juliet tries to sound flippant, but it comes out as a question, to them both.

“Julie.” Rachel gives her a knowing look, a knowing tone. “You haven’t so much as looked twice at a man since Ed.” And it’s true; she hasn’t. She doesn’t like to think about why. “There’s no such thing as ‘just a guy’ where you’re concerned.”

That’s true, too; always has been.

“So, tell me about him,” Rachel prompts, bouncing a little on the cushion of the couch.

“There’s not much to tell,” she tries dodging again; it half works.

“Sure there isn’t,” Rachel scoffs, pushing to her feet and retreating to the kitchen. “I might not be the genius you are,” she calls back over the scrape of glasses and the slosh-and-trickle that follows as they’re filled, “but I’m not stupid enough to fall for that.”

She’s hopeful that the blush is gone from her cheeks before Rachel comes back in, handing her a glass carefully from its crystal stem.

“Wine?” Juliet asks warily, breathing in the soft rose-colored liquid and sampling it on the tip of her tongue.

“For you,” Rachel says with a quick and easy smile, the simple, fleeting, thoughtless kind that had grown strained over the months, but had never disappeared completely -- just another reason Juliet admired her sister more than words could skim at the surface. “I’ve got some rather delicious pomegranate juice to toast with.” She raises her glass in demonstration, stilling for a second as her eyes snap into line with Juliet’s before tilting her cup to clink against Juliet’s, the water stains drawn down in drips catching in the light.

“But that’s for...” She can’t quite make out the label of the bottle on the kitchen counter, but just a slightly more discerning sniff at the mouth of the glass and a fuller sip against her taste-buds, tells her it’s the Cabernet Sauvignon they’d bought, just after Rachel had been diagnosed -- insurance for when the battle was over. “We’ve been saving that,” she protests, her features scrunched in confusion as she looks over at her sister with no small amount of concern -- in her experience, after all, surprises had never quite been precursors to joy.

“Well, this is a special occasion,” Rachel says, still smiling despite Juliet’s confusion, her trepidation. “I saw my doctor today.” And despite the smile on Rachel’s face, the way she glows, Juliet’s chest seizes and her stomach drops, because between them, those five words have brought nothing but struggle and loss; and Juliet, she can’t take another blow, won’t weather everything crumbling down, _again_ , just when things were starting to look up.

“I’m still cancer-free.” And for as blissful, as hopeful and joyful as Rachel looks as she says it -- words she’s been waiting so long to say -- it’s nothing compared to the weight that dissolves in Juliet’s chest, that lifts with only its residue remaining; she’d forgotten how heavy it was, forgotten what it felt like to breathe without it bearing down against her.

“I’ve never... not this long, you know?” Rachel continues, blinking too fast, her lower lip trembling a bit. “I’ve always relapsed.” And Juliet remembers, in detail, every single time -- every false start and bad screening, every doctor’s appointment suffered with baited breath, and for a reason. “I’m really going to have my baby,” she whispers, and if she keeps the tears at bay, Juliet doesn’t know it, because her own are already starting to blind her. “I’m going to be a mother.”

 _I’m going to live long enough to be a mother._ It’s never said, but it’s always been implied.

It’s not a thing that either of them dared to hope for, and seeing it now -- the truth of it in Rachel’s growing hair and growing belly; seeing it now, Juliet can almost believe in miracles, in things turning out _right_.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
 _  
_  
“You’ve been in Miami almost six weeks,” she starts, her lips drawing uneven lines in the film of whip still clinging to the lip of her mug; “what exactly are you doing here?”

Nathan swallows slowly, and the silence seems long, warm against her skin. “We’ve been working closely with the University’s medical center in establishing a new division of our Biotech Training Program," he tells her, his finger laced around his own cup and drumming down the side opposite the handle. "Specifically, they’re focusing more directly on stem cell research, advanced disease prevention and treatment, that sort of thing. Most of which is beyond my knowledge base -- I’m just the guy who makes sure it’s all kosher on the legal end of things.” He smiles, and the curves match the meniscus, what's left of his drink.

Things start to fall into place, then -- things she should have figured before now, things she should have asked: why he's in the city, why he was at Miami Central, how it happened that their paths crossed as they did.

“And you were meeting with,” she clears her throat, because the pain's mostly gone, but the name still scratches on the way up her throat: “Edmund Burke, I assume.”

It's subtle, but he crosses himself: a brief, disguised touch to the furrow between his brows, the brush of his thumb, just the pad of it against his lower lip, almost as if to wipe away the long-deflated foam from his latte -- the careful straightening of either side of his shirt, pulling apart the line of buttons at the center as he touches near his shoulders, guarded. Secret. A clandestine sort of respect for the dead.

“Which is why my stay’s been extended a bit,” he comments offhandedly, though there's sympathy in the underpinning. “I mean, I expected the better part of a month, but..." He shrugs, lifting his mug to his lips before lowering it half-way again, level with his shoulders, his collarbone. "Obviously we’re looking at significantly longer now. Not that it’s a problem, of course, or anything," he tacks on -- an afterthought, but genuine.

“Of course," she murmurs between sips, lets the waning heat of her coffee fill in the parts that still feel cold to think about it, about him; they're there, but they're not many -- and she's slowly reaching a point where she might be able to recognize the role of a certain person sitting across from her in helping that process along.

"Do you know anything about Mittelos Bioscience?” she asks suddenly, sucking her bottom lip into her mouth and savoring an extra tinge of vanilla bean from the syrup that had clung to the side of her mug.

“The ones in Portland?” She nods, and he lets out a low, airy sort of whistle that doesn't really hit a pitch, and falls breathy instead between them. “Yeah,” he picks back up, “they’re one of our biggest competitors. The West Coast’s got a jump on the whole biotech thing nationally, sure, but our overseas holdings are fairly extensive.” It's completely out of character, but she almost finds it amusing, the way he leaps to defend his company's honor. She breathes in the sharp bite of java beneath the flavors that skim the surface of her drink, re-centering herself as he plows on. “In fact, we’ve been talking with this outfit in Copenhagen about a huge investment project.” His eyes flicker to hers, which she can almost feel sparkling with an indulgent sort of mirth. “But I’m sure you don’t want to hear about all of that," he wraps up, and if his cheeks flush just a little, she takes it as something of a compliment. “Why do you ask?”

“This man, from Mittelos. He’s been…” She pauses, trying to find the right word for the gentleman that put her on edge and at ease in the very same moment, with his eyes that saw the world from start to finish. “He’s very adamant that I come and work for them.”

“Well, they didn’t send me down here for recruiting, but…” He glances from the scoop of her neckline up to the roots of her hair. “If Mittelos wants you? You’ve got to be pretty damn amazing.” It’s funny, because it’s not surprise, or admiration in his voice right there; it sounds expected, almost blasé -- and it doesn’t feel like an insult, either. “They don’t settle for second best, I’ll give them that much.”

“I’d say I’m fairly good at what I do, yes.” The silence that follows is, inexplicably, a heady one -- it doesn't feel awkward, so much as it feels charged; anticipatory. She feels strangely in control of it, and it's a beautiful, unexpected sensation that she's missed of late, that she's been waiting to feel again for far too long.

“Okay, so, I feel kind of like an ass for this,” he prefaces, and she tries not to smile too smugly, tries to train her features into idle interest in what he's saying; all told, she fails fairly miserably. “I know you’re in medicine but...”

“Research, actually." She saves him the fishing, amusing as she finds it -- finds the strange and endearing way the dip above his lip deepens as he tries to feel out the situation, tries to find steady ground in uncertain waters. "Well, mostly. Fertility research. But I work with patients still, when my schedule permits.” She thinks of Rachel, mostly -- plays with the threading in the arm of the reupholstered recliner she's curled in the corner of when the thought of her future niece or nephew burrows, nestles into the folds of her mind -- warm and happy and wonderful in ways she didn't think she'd ever know.

“Somehow, I don’t think you’re talking about just helping out a few guys shooting blanks.” He eyes her, wheels turning behind his gaze. “Or making sure there’ll be octo-moms a-plenty through the twenty-first century.”

She chuckles, and figures it's irrelevant to mention the Serophene trials she'd worked on. “Not quite.”

“If I had to guess, I'd say you did all kinds of groundbreaking experimental stuff, particularly if Mittelos is taking note. What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever done at work?” he asks, looking like a grade school boy -- eyes wide with the promise of a dare, a prod; one upping his rival, but playfully, as if neither of them have anything to prove.

She kind of likes that feeling.

“I impregnated a field mouse, once," she answers casually, her lashes lowered until she can see their shadows flicker over the surface of milky mocha, lukewarm but still strong, still satisfying.

“Huh," and he's skeptical, doesn't believe her, but has no real reason for doubt -- caught between logic and feeling, and doesn't she know that conundrum like the back of her hand, the beat of her heart.

“A male field mouse,” she adds, gaze steady, voice flippant, as if it happens every day.

“You’re kidding.” His tone’s shifted from doubtful to incredulous, and her lips curl again; somehow, she doesn’t think she usually smiles so easy, so often.

“He didn’t carry to term,” she laments, a little drama slipping into her voice as she recalls the poor little thing in her mind’s eye, “but the fact remains.”

He chuckles at that, staccato and a little bit floored, passing his palm over his mouth as his jaw hangs a little bit open. "So you're actually a genius,” he says flatly, but his eyes are wide, and she thinks she may have just impressed him; it feels natural, unforced -- like clockwork. “Is it wrong that I’m a little bit turned on by that?”

She giggles at that, feeling the pink creep up her neck at the way he seems to look at her with a little more weight, a little more longing; his look, in truth, doesn’t change as it settles in around her with more force, more intensity -- but she notices now, feels it full, and all of a sudden there’s heat in her stomach and a lightness in her chest, like she’s thirteen again and the boy in her algebra class had asked her to the spring fling. “Considering the story centers on a pregnant male rodent? Probably.” She attempts a stilted sort of arrogance, all in good fun, but the way her teeth keep showing through her smirk -- stretching it too wide, from playful condescension into joy -- defeats the purpose quite spectacularly.

“Eh,” he grins back, taking a long swig from his cup. “I can deal with probably.”

Funny, she thinks, so can she.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
 _  
_  
They keep the pattern up for another few weeks before it’s interrupted; she doesn’t think too much on the way her stomach plunges and her lips pull downward as he tells her he can’t make the cafe that afternoon, that he’ll be in a meeting until at least seven, but the way she brightens, the way her heart flutters awkwardly at the base of her throat when he asks her to meet him for cocktails later that night is something that she can’t really ignore, no matter how much she may want to.

She finds a dress, hidden at the back of her closet behind pencil skirts and sleek suit jackets and enough different-colored oxford tops to paint through the rainbow twice over: short hem, high neck, just a bit snug against her chest and light, airy on her thighs where it tapers off to nothing -- and the lavender of it washes her skin out a little bit, but the cut's flattering. She’s always liked it.

Edmund had always thought it made her look like "some prepubescent grade-school chick," and she doesn't know whether it's her imagination, or something more tangible that smells of stale blossoms and formaldehyde when she smiles at herself in the mirror, lips curled subtly, without teeth.

She pinches at her cheeks -- an old habit learned from watching her mother in front of her makeup mirror, wanting so badly to be just like her, only to find now that she wants anything but -- and she breathes deep against the beginnings of nerves, of butterflies waking in the pit of her stomach; it's been so long since she's done this.

Funny, that she hadn’t realized before that she's been doing this every day for the past two months; it hadn’t seemed so significant, so weighty when it had just been coffee every afternoon. Something about twilight and alcohol, though -- it sends a thrill through her that means _more_.

Idly, she wonders what it is about the time of day that really matters; what the position of the sun in the sky, the light that spreads changes about a person, a meeting, a rendezvous. She knows, in the tight grip of her chest, what secrets _she's_ hidden under the cover of night.

She _feels_ a bit too much like that prepubescent grade-school chick as she studies her wide-eyed reflection, notes that she looks nearly a whole cup-size larger when she breathes in deeply, at least half-a-cup bigger when she squares her shoulders and straightens up her spine.

She shakes her head at herself, realizing just how fucking absurd she's being, and grabs for the most casual clutch she owns: white satin, with detailing so fragile she's already managed to snap it off at least five times -- thank god for hot glue guns. Before she leaves, though, she sprays one last burst from her bottle of Ferragamo, because there's still the lingering scent of roses and tears that clings where it doesn’t belong, refuses to let go.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

He's already there, settled on a stool at an elevated table for two in the far right corner of the establishment, somehow defiant of the softly-hued shadows cast from the ceiling, bright and undampened as he waves her toward him with an easy sort of grin.

She orders Sex on the Beach as he sips at a whiskey sour, and he asks if he should take that as a hint. She doesn't even think to be uncomfortable, to read past the smile in his eyes, the leering promise behind them; she merely laughs into her glass of water and relishes the cool as it slides, monsoon-like, down the her throat.

"How was work?" he asks casually, his eyes somewhere between her earring at the wall to her left as he lifts the glass to his lips, lets the deep amber wash across his teeth. And it doesn’t mean anything, not really -- but it’s something he’s never asked her before. Something that means more than it does.

“Busy,” she replies, swallowing deep and long against the sudden leap in her pulse, leaving him an out to avoid the tedious details of her profession; the innocuous minutiae of who she is beyond the coffee and the way she’s learned to smile at him over the lip of a mug, the soft circle of a straw.

“Busy with what?” And he meets her eyes this time, like earth meeting sky, and she shivers at the contact, mouth dry and she has to hood her gaze, make a spectacle of savoring the citrus and the tart berry on her tongue before she can bring herself to believe in it, to buy into the very idea that someone cares without having to.

It’s unnerving. It’s warm, unsettled beneath the flutter in her chest.

She’d forgotten what this felt like.

So she tells him: about the ultrasound technician who incorrectly identified the sex of her patient’s child; about the paperwork fiasco involved in the hiring process that has somehow found its way onto _her_ desk of late; how she’s spent more time than is strictly warranted lamenting the lack of an opportunity for doing her actual job, for researching and experimenting and breaking down the kind of barriers most people shy away from. That’s what’s saved her from self-destructing this long -- the fact that somewhere in her world, in her life, she has control. Somewhere, she does things that matter.

Not that she says so, of course, and not that he interrupts her with requests for elaboration, but she doesn’t stop until she can feel the strain of so much extended speaking start to gnaw at her throat, and she can still feel the interest of his eyes on her, focused and steady above the neck -- attentive. She doesn’t know what to make of it.

“No rat impregnations today?” he asks, nibbling at their appetizer sampler when she wraps up at an awkward conclusion. It was something jumbled about labs and the mysterious case of the pregnant teen who supposedly hadn’t even started menstruating yet, which, admittedly, had piqued her attention until they quickly discovered that the girl had really just told her disgustingly gullible mother she’d yet to get her period so that she could have sex with half the football team without rousing undue suspicion; it’s an _awkward_ conclusion, of course, because menstruating girls aren’t quite what normal people talk about over cocktails. “I’m almost disappointed.”

“Mice. Pregnant mice,” and his eyes are still heavy, focused on her as she corrects him, and she can feel the blush creep into her cheeks as she dips her chin and finishes her drink, motions to a passing waitress for something a little stronger, a little more grounding. She lets her lips close heavy on themselves, clears her throat in a flurry of embarrassment and the stinging dregs of the schnapps, takes in the two empty glasses at his elbow, ice melting and fracturing the light -- one half-full, caught in a flippant sort of grasp, all splayed fingers and thumbprints against the condensation. She had to have taken up a good half an hour, if she’s lucky. More, if she’s honest.

Impossibly, he only smiles at her, his nose dipped close to his drink so that when he exhales, it clouds against the glass like frost, like steam; unfathomably, it’s almost as if he hadn’t noticed. Or noticed, and just doesn’t mind.

“So,” she ventures, her voiced pitched higher than normal as she smoothes her palms against the skin of her thighs, crosses her legs only to uncross them, recross them where they dangle unnoticed beneath the table, “what about you?” And she realizes, then, with the stunning clarity of the sorts of things that should be obvious, but aren’t, that for all they’ve talked about families and childhoods and literature and the value of an extra shot of espresso, she still doesn’t know what he’s doing in Miami aside from the barebones of the operation; she only knew what he did for a living in the first place from the goddamn business card she’d found in his wallet.

“Has Miami been everything you’d hoped for so far?”  
  
He grins, and it’s a little wolfish, a little bit leading in the shadows, versus the streaming sun; it sends pleasant shivers down her spine as he answers, “Everything and more.”

She laughs, a little tight -- a little too much like a giggle, in a register a little higher than she can hit -- but he takes a drink, his face bathed in rose, and when she realizes the lighting above him is much more blue than pink, she lets the laughter bubble forth a bit freer, a bit lighter; lets it be hope and not fear that carried her through the lull before he takes up with the niceties: idiot interns at the office, incompetent associates and a particularly wonderful breakfast burrito he’d picked up on the way in that very morning.

And it’s odd, how different everything feels in a dress, in the dark, her lips tacky with liquor and color; everything feels new and frightening and exhilarating, plunging harsh and swift in her stomach without regard to the way it sends her heart racing, her breath thinning, as if they’d never spoken, never touched.

They’ve shared so many afternoons, so many words, and yet they’ve rarely just asked about each other’s day like this -- the minutiae that make a life from sunrise to sunset, between breaths. Or maybe they have, but not like this, because this is wildly incredible and absurd, almost sad, and strangely domestic and significant in ways she can’t put a finger on, can’t quite pin down. And it’s amazing, she thinks, how much you can know about a person without really knowing them at all.

But he tells her about the details, the trivialities, as if it’s the most natural thing in the world, his hands talking twice as quickly as he does -- a fact she finds endearing -- as he goes on about documents and negotiations and taking calls from back home, trying to tie loose ends from hundreds of miles south of where he needs to be; where he’s _supposed_ to be, she reminds herself sternly, because it’s all too easy to think that this is something steady, something real, the start of something that could become something, and to forget that he’s here on business, on loan.

It hasn’t escaped her notice, though, that Nathan has money, and she can’t help the twinge of hope that blossoms, unwanted and unwarranted and undimmed, whenever she wonders just what keeps him from simply flying to New York and back to take care of things in person.

He stops, abruptly, and it shakes her from her musings, takes her that much longer to notice that their server’s come back to ask how they’re doing. Nathan orders another drink -- the obligatory nightcap -- and she asks for a White Russian to his Black.

They both forget where they’d left off, and the buzzing sort of hum that plays backdrop to their silence is the most comfortable thing -- soft and safe and full. She just smiles, because he does; she suspects, or maybe just hopes, that his smile draws on her own.

They work on their drinks slowly, drawing out whatever this is, might be -- it’s easy, but charged in a way it’s never been before; and it’s unexpected, when he grabs her hand from across the table, and it strikes her, suddenly, that they’ve never even kissed.

“Come back to my place?” he asks, hope in his voice and a light in his eyes beyond the reflections, the refractions shining from above, and she smiles, because she can feel the question as well she hears it; she feels the subtle unsteadiness, the tension in his fingertips where he holds on to the heel of her palm.

And it’s amazing, she thinks as she nods, feels her pulse stutter and surge, how little you can know about a person when in truth, you know them like the sound of your own soul.

She savors every sip as she watches him

She drops the tip to the table, wedges it discreetly beneath her empty glass, watches as a stray droplet of coffee-tinged cream soaks against the bills, saturates the greens to emerald. For reasons she doesn’t know, she runs her fingertip along the top of the glass, collecting what’s left of the evening and bringing it to her lips for an evaluatory taste; on impulse, she reaches to trace his glass as well. It’s headier, fuller and richer than her own -- filled with the promise of its own demons.

She pushes in her barstool and squeezes her handbag hard against the center of her palm, follows him out with looking back.

 _  
_~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

She doesn’t recognize the door: neither its color nor its shape, and in retrospect, it’s both a shameful and a reasonable thing -- her head had been spinning, after all, but it just makes the whole thing more despicable, the memory of it somehow more sour at the back of her throat.

The layout doesn’t ring any bells, either -- the setup of the rooms and the furniture; it’s familiar enough, but basic to the point of genericness, and there’s no reason to suspect it, to think twice. The tile under her feet, the shag of the carpet -- neither sparks her memory.

It's not until she follows him into the kitchen, leans against the refrigerator and lets the hum of it fill her head as he reaches for a glass and asks her if she wants anything; it's not until she asks for a water and tips her head back against the door of the freezer as he pours himself two fingers of Maker’s Mark that she remembers the rumble, feels it beat in her pulse, between her thighs, and she knows -- knows the light and the voice and the touch and the taste underneath sadness and heartache and too much tequila, and all the things she would have died to forget, if she could have -- she knows, and she's been here before.  
   
He looks at her, and she can tell that he sees the way her eyes glaze, her body tenses, the way she crumbles and cracks without indication, without warning. He shepherds her gently into the living room -- she can remember it, now, in shadows and vague impressions, on the way to the bedroom beyond; just a hand on her elbow and a lean, a slow gravitation toward her that drives her forward, keeps her moving until she stops, falls, settles onto the plush ottoman that's closest to her.  
   
She looks up at him, and all she feels is sad for a moment as he reaches out and hands her a glass of water she doesn't remember watching him get. She means to say: _'that isn't me; I never do things like that.'_ She wants to tell him: ' _you found me at a low point, a dead point -- you found me broken.’_

What she actually manages is: “Do you have anything stronger?”

He retracts his hand, gaze wary but giving; offers his glass of whiskey, ice clinking like raindrops on glass. She doesn't hesitate in grabbing for it and knocking half of it back in a single swallow.

“My ex-husband died," she says, mouth dry and throat burning; "Two months ago today.” She shivers as the alcohol settles, seems to sear bright as it hits.

“His funeral was three days later.” He says nothing in response, doesn't see the vague shapes, the pieces she's slowly bringing together, the picture that's starting to coalesce. She remembers the flowers, the tightness in her chest; remembers the drinks and the lights and a touch that's dampened by the buzz of everything -- of hate and fear and grief and a desperation that makes her cheeks burn -- but still familiar, now that the connection is there, now that she knows. The little things -- small memories and tiny points of contrast, similaritiy -- it all seems so much more vivid now, the feel of him; it taints whatever it is they've come here for, whatever they'd be planning, wanting, silently, and the tears that gather behind her eyelids feel hot and coarse, the sob in her throat like ice.

It’s only when the burn and the shame state to well in her eyes that he seems to see it; to recognize; his eyes grow wide and she can see herself, see the reflection of her eyes a little dead, a little hollow in his own like they gleamed that night, and she has to look away -- can't stand the shock that precedes the disgust that she feels; can't wait to see if he feels it, too.

She tries, moves to rise, to leave, to run -- tries, but fails, rooted to the spot, helpless and drained, eyes on the tops of her toes, so it's a delayed reaction when she gasps against his mouth as he presses his thumb to her chin and lifts her into a kiss, gets her lost in the taste of sour and edge and the cut of stale vodka, thrumming with the pulse she can count against his tongue. Maybe it's not the same as before, maybe nothing's ruined -- or if it is, maybe it's not beyond fixing.

His hand cups behind her head and draws her deeper, opens her further as he fits between her knees and leans down to drink hard from her mouth; and she can tell in the soft brush of his fingertips, the firm but gentle massage of his lips on her own: he understands.  
   
It's more than she'd dared to hope for.  
 __

 __~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
 __

 __Eventually, she falls back into her regular schedule -- and she feels rejuvenated, shockingly enough, not at all like an... ex-widow, of whatever it is she now is. Sometimes it still hurts when she walks past his old office, or when she passes through his part of town, but for some reason -- a number of reasons -- it doesn't weigh her down like it used to, doesn't haunt at her back anymore.

Nathan is a lot of the reason.

He becomes something a given, a fixture in her everyday routine -- and she tried, for a time, to ignore it; to think of anything but the fact that she didn't anticipate, but expected the time that she spent with him -- that when she called, she didn't wonder whether he'd pick up. When it became too hard, to trying to ignore -- stole too much of her energy as she sought to pretend it away -- she decided to acknowledge it, process it like a mature adult ought to, but allow it to exist outside of herself, to be separate and foreign, familiar only at a glance, versus a touch.

That, too, soon becomes a moot point, and it's harder to mind it than to simply give in.

He meets her for lunch almost every day; she can count on just one hand how many times he has to cancel for his own appointments. Sometimes they grab dinner. Sometimes she ends up at his house, makes innocent memories there -- like breaking the ice maker in his freezer and eating her first s'more in eons after exploding three marshmallows in his microwave and kissing slow and sweet on his couch until she can barely feel her lips --- that eventually wipe away the old ones.

Or, if not wipe them away, then buffer them; give them a context that isn't so bleak. Whatever happens, though, it's warm and subtle and she doesn't mind it -- it's too early to decide, to admit if she likes it, really; too soon -- so she doesn't fight it, doesn't question.

Because she likes her mornings when he texts her a quick hello, or surprises her outside of work with a latte and a quick kiss that keeps her coffee tasting like him until it's gone. She likes sampling his food, reaching over and nabbing a bite from his plate with her fork, likes the smile it pulls from his lips as he grabs for her drink and takes a sip between her swallows. She likes the weight of his arm around her shoulders, his hand in hers in fleeting moments when they brush, pass, touch. She likes being with him, watching him, watching him watch her -- and his eyes, his eyes say the things she’d always resented Edmund for never saying, never doing: things like, _you’re beautiful_ and _you’re brilliant_ and _I don’t know what I saw in anyone I met before I found you_.

And she’s older now, stronger, surer -- she doesn’t need the words.

She likes it; all of it, even as it plummets in her gut and makes her question everything she ever thought she knew.

And sometimes, they sprawl across the sheets -- under them and over them, clothed and unclothed -- and she doesn't have to think about it, doesn't have to wonder at the novelty, even if she does sometimes, just because. It’s like a gift she doesn’t want, and doesn’t want to lose, either, and she doesn’t know what to do with it, how to react. She’s only ever wanted the things she’d never gotten, would never know -- she doesn’t know how to deal with wanting something she’d convinced herself she was better off without.  
 _  
_  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Frankly, she’s surprised that Mittelos is still speaking to her, after so many weeks -- months, now, really. For being so insistent in the first place, they’ve been incredibly lenient as her schedule has shifted, as grief segued with dizzying speed into anything and everything at once, her own responsibilities coupled with everything Edmund’s secretaries couldn’t manage or pawn off on closer colleagues to the late Dr. Burke.

Turned out, though, that after everything, Juliet still knew the most about Ed’s research, about the projects he’d been backing and the studies he’d been following -- and it made her sad, to think that she’d been the closest to him, in the end, had known him best.

Just the thought of it had convinced her, for the most part, to take the extra work without much complaint.

And if she cancels on Alpert twice to meet Nathan for a quick bite or a latte and a leisurely walk on her lunch -- well, a little white lie wouldn’t do anyone any harm.

Except, maybe it would, did -- was, in fact, this very moment causing harm; it’s a fact that seems unavoidable and inexcusable as she peeks inside the folder that’s sitting on the table in the deserted conference room she’d been seen into upon arriving at Mittelos’ Miami headquarters. A fact that was evidenced starkly, heartbreakingly, by the same scans she’d been shown before, of the seventy-year-old womb in the twenty-six-year-old’s body, with a paper-clipped note at the corner, bearing the angry scrawl of “Deceased.”

That’s blood on _her_ hands.

She quickly closes the file and walks as far from it as the room will allow, passes the windows without looking at her own reflection as she puts distance between herself and yet another awful truth of her own making, of her own... indecision.

Her failings.

She biting back the very edges of something like hysteria when her eyes fall upon a statue -- a figure, molded out of bronze, or something close to bronze, catching light from the ceiling, from the sky; the curves of it are soothing, somehow -- ancient. She follows the infinite curl of metal, the bend and give of it twirling around and passing through itself, piercing its own heart and writing its own beginnings and ends, and she breathes easier, for an instant; knows inexplicable, undeserved peace.

Her eyes find the placard affixed to the pedestal beneath it, though instead of bearing a title and an artist, it simply sports a line of inscrutable text. The markings, letters -- almost Hebrew, but not quite -- are mesmerizing, their artistry profound in a way that has her reaching out, running the pads of her fingers just below the nails against the etching of it, the concave lines that make no sense; speak volumes.

“God loves you as He loved Jacob,” a voice says from just beyond her left shoulder; she spins on the balls of her feet, her balance shaky as she takes in the narrow-featured brunet standing behind her, sea-foam scrubs hanging loosely from his gangly frame. He points indicatively to the plaque she’d been studying, and she registers then that he’s translating words that, somehow, she thinks she already knew.

Her lips thin together in a gentle, strained sort of gratitude, and his answering smile is so much more open, more welcoming that it strikes something unsettling in her, resonates as deception, as deliberately misleading. Covering something sinister, something foul with the guise of friendliness, of altruism.

She curls her toes against the insole of her flats before she turns back, fingers tracing the etchings of each letter with a reverence she doesn’t understand.

“You probably don’t remember me,” she hears him pick up again, clearing his throat before he speaks; his sneakers scuff against the smooth flooring as he takes a step closer; too close. “I’m--”

“I remember you,” she says carefully, remembers the way he’d been there when the walls came crashing down, closing in -- an intrusion, an interloper. She doesn’t turn around as she rolls his name, clinical and precise, past her lips: “Ethan.”

There’s a silence that follows as she loses herself in the warped, distorted blotches of color that settle on the surface of the sculpture -- blues and pinks and peaches where she stares, transfixed, and if it weren’t for the distinct lack of footsteps, of retreat, she’d have thought she was alone again.

“Dr. Alpert’s been a bit delayed, I’m afraid,” Ethan tells her, far away. He sounds contrite, certainly, but she can’t tell, can’t focus enough to figure if it’s real or feigned.

 _God loves you as He loved Jacob.  
_  
“We can reschedule?” Ethan proposes, and she turns suddenly to meet his questioning gaze; there’s something hopeful in his tone, in his eyes -- and maybe it’s merely friendly concern, or regret at the inconvenience; maybe she’s misread him entirely.

But there’s something there that she doesn’t like, that flashes like lead in the pit of her stomach -- and she’s still not sure if she wants this job or not, if the immense professional freedom is worth the personal sacrifices she’ll be forced to make; but she owes it to herself to consider it, to give it a real, serious shot, now that she can.

Edmund’s dead, after all, and she’s still not convinced -- not in her heart of hearts -- that there’s no connection. She can’t prove it, of course, can’t logically reason it out, but the intimation, the suggestion remains. The guilt doesn’t die.

She may have hated him, in the end, but she’d loved him, too, and she’ll be damned if he died in vain.

So, she folds herself neatly into a chair at the table, crossing her legs high enough to strain the fabric of her skirt.

“I’m more than willing to wait,” she replies with a cordial, if tight sort of smile. Ethan says nothing, just nods, and leaves the way he entered.

Within five minutes, there’s a mimosa in front of her and a plate of croissants that melt like heaven on her tongue, and she’s almost convinced that it’s just Ethan who rubs her the wrong way about this place, these people; they’re feeding her, after all, and that’s a universal check in the plus column.

The delay stretches into mid-morning, teeters on afternoon; Juliet declines the offer of lunch when an assistant comes in to assure her that Dr. Alpert will be in within the hour, and settles for plain orange juice in her champagne glass as she polishes off the rest of the pastries. She watches the interplay of the waxing sun against the statue she’d studied before, channeled through the wet glass at the top of the flute in her hand as it paints a dancing portrait of light on the walls, falls in the etching beneath the artwork again, spelling the words in copper and gold.

 _As he loved Jacob.  
_  
She thinks back to the dead woman’s CT scans in the folder, and for a second -- just a second -- she feels the need to pity Jacob, whoever he was, is; just a little.


	4. Chapter 4

It’s second nature to call Nathan, now, when she gets out of the meeting and knows he has the afternoon free.

It’s not quite second nature that she knows his schedule so well, but she has a strange feeling that it could be, if given the chance.

 _‘Should we meet at the cafe?’_ he asks, his voice a deep rumble across the line, and she smiles to herself, content that no one can see it and know what it means, but strangely... cold, at the thought that Nathan isn’t there to watch it unfold, and return its heat in kind.

 _‘I’m on my way home,’_ she answers, quick, thoughtless – natural -- _‘meet me there.’  
_  
It’s after she walks in, sits down, waits for the knock on her door that she realizes, suddenly, that she’s never had a man who wasn’t Edmund in this house.

Sure, he’s picked her up in the morning once or twice, driven her home and kissed her goodnight on the porch like a black-and-white romance with the wind in her hair, but he’s never crossed the threshold, never stepped inside.

When she opens the door and waves him in, it feels immense; anti-climactic. He grins at her, pulls her in for a kiss, lets his palms linger on the points of her elbows before he pulls away and follows her to the kitchen; it feels right, she thinks, having him here.

He fits, here.

She ducks into the refrigerator, grabbing a bottled water and a beer for Nathan, hiding her surprise, her uncertainty against the rush of cool that escapes the open door, letting it soak against her skin to camouflage the blush that rises in her cheeks.

“How’d it go?” he asks her, surreptitiously eyeing the lightly-feminine decor, lavender shades against pale yellows, sunny accents here and there around the room, as he settles at the table, takes the glass of iced tea that Juliet hands him before sitting down herself.

“Well, I think.” He smiles, tips his glass toward her for a congratulatory toast out of the cheap colored cups she’d bought at Winn-Dixie a lifetime ago; she can’t quite swallow her giggle as she taps her drink against his.

“Think you’re going to go for it?”

She sips, swallows, mulls around an answer. “I don’t know,” she finally says, honest, as she folds her hands and rests her chin against her knuckles. “It really is an excellent opportunity. But I don’t know how I feel about being so far away from...” she trails, thinks of Rachel, of Nathan, and coughs, uncertain, “everything, you know?”

Nathan nods, seems to pick up on what she wants him to, the things she doesn’t say; seems to miss what she keeps hidden with intention. “I mean,” he starts, “and don’t take this the wrong way, but I could, you know, talk to some people. Set you up with something, if it’s the University you’re looking to get away from.” There’s understanding, compassion in his eyes as he says it, and she thinks she’s lucky, to have run into him not just the once.

“Trying to win me away from the competition?” she teases, jabbing an accusatory finger at him in jest. “I don’t need anyone doing me any favors.”

He laughs at her, stretches his legs out across the tile, drapes his ankles over the legs of the table. “No,” he says, grinning around the lip of his cup, “no, you don’t.”

She doesn’t know how it’s meant, but she takes it as a compliment, a vote of confidence, and it radiates through her from head to foot.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

From that point, things begin to shift, to bow and give to the new presence, the new course her life seems to be taking without her permission, without her instruction. He spends the night in her bed more often than she spends it in his; and they sleep together more than they sleep apart. She buys an extra razor, and a bottle of mouthwash to keep at his house, and his toothbrush sits next to hers on the sink-top; he buys her oatmeal to keep at his place, and she makes sure that she picks up white bread when she’s out shopping, and not just wheat -- they both learn to turn the toaster down and up accordingly, after she burns her bagel and he has to toast a waffle four times to get the proper scorch.

It’s gradual, the way her paradigm shifts to accommodate this new rhythm, this new ebb and flow that’s so foreign to her, so familiar; and overall, it’s exhilarating, and a little terrifying, the way they learn each other in the little ways, the unspoken, simple way – nowadays she notices the thrumming of her heart more often than she ever did, as if she’s always anticipating something unspoken, unlooked for, and the adrenaline sets her off-balance, off-kilter; even so, though, she’s never felt more alive.

And that’s what kills her; what _kills_ her -- she’d never wanted to feel this again, and she can’t quite shake that resolve, even when feeling it again feels so good.

But then she learns to expect the way he smells, rubbing off and lingering on the pillow that used to lie untouched next to her; she expects the way he sets his phone to vibrate in the mornings, because he needs an extra half-an-hour to get ready, and he thinks it’s quiet enough, the buzzing against the bedside table, to keep from waking her. She expects the padding of his feet in her dreams when he gets up for the bathroom in the middle of the night, and the subtle squeak of the mattress when he settles back in next to her. She learns to expect the feel of her next to her, the way he pulls her close -- loose, but still sure -- as he drifts back off beneath the sheets.

She learns to appreciate anew the taste of sunlight and the echo, the tang of his seed on her lips when he leaves; the ghost of his touch on her skin, between her thighs. She learns to miss the feel of his lips on hers, his weight atop of her -- his mouth kissing her hello as much as goodbye. She relearns how to gravitate, how to live in a concentric sort of orbit with another, versus spinning by herself, and she finds the world is vivid again, infused with zest and vibrancy. It’s almost painful, almost a curse -- she’s exposed beneath the color and the shade of so much life, and it’s awful and wonderful, all agony and terror and the flutter of her heart in her chest when his hand brushes hers as she stirs a dinner made for two.

Because reaching for her toothpaste and grabbing his on accident, or taking a sip out of his coffee in the morning when he’s buttering his toast, because his is warmer and the creamer in hers has taken the edge off too soon -- they’re all gears, spokes on a bike she’d ridden once before, had crashed and mangled and barely survived, if she’s honest, and she’s gripping the handlebars now to the point of blisters, to breaking; her hands are still burned from the first time around, knees still skinned; and she’ll be damned if she reopens those wounds when she’s only just managed to staunch them.

She’ll be _damned_.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Perhaps it was naive -- no, not perhaps; it _was_ naive -- but she hadn’t thought about the fact that this was not where he belonged; that he had a home, a profession, a life somewhere else that had nothing to do with her, nothing to do with here, and someday, inevitably, he’d have to go back.

And it’s not as if it’s a sordid affair, where he slips off into the night without a trace. He tells her, the day he finds out -- or so he states -- while threading cufflinks into his sleeves and pulling the starched material straight at the wrists.

“They need me at the firm,” is his lead-in, and Juliet, she doesn’t react, merely remains in bed, relishing the way that the sunlight flitters, crosses the threshold of the window sill and warms the sheets so that when her skin starts to cool as the words sink in, and the night seeps away, she doesn’t notice the chill.

“It’ll be a couple of weeks, if I’m lucky,” and Juliet, she just picks at the threads in the bedding, pulls them until they fray further, come undone. “Month at the most.”

“But I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he promises, sounds sincere. He eyes her in the mirror, and she can feel the gravity of his gaze on her top of her head where it’s bowed in his direction.

She hears his steps pad softly on the carpet, and she feels him settle at her back, the mattress pulling her into the dip of his weight. And when his hands rest tenderly, carefully at the globes of her shoulders, cupping them with wide palms and massaging at them warmly; when his lips press gently at the line of her clavicle, his nose dragging slow at the curve of her neck as he breathes, when he holds her to him and buries his face against her, the line of his glasses hard and cool against her skin; as she clutches the sheet to her naked chest, it’s a strange, yet fitting, sort of goodbye.

She tells herself she’s glad he didn’t ask her to come with him; knows she’d have had to say no. She tries to convince herself that it doesn’t matter.

It’s not a particularly winning argument.  
 __

 __~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

“So this guy,” Rachel starts in one evening, her hair budding in a beautiful shade of strawberry blonde, nearing auburn at the roots. She pauses, balancing a slice from the block of muenster cheese she’s cutting on the edge of her knife and raising it gingerly to her lips, flicking the piece between her teeth with the aid of her tongue. “Do I get to meet him anytime soon?” The words are muffled as she chews nonchalantly, returns to slicing her pieces and arranging them between the squares of sharp cheddar and the sloppy chunks of brie she’s already finished.

“Maybe,” Juliet says between munching at crackers, laughing as Rachel swats her hand away from her well-manicured stacks of cheese. “He’s out of town.”

Rachel shoots a knowing smirk in her direction, and Juliet can feel the hint of blush creep up in her cheeks before she even hears her sister’s smart remark. “Oh, so that’s why you’ve decided to come spend a lonely Saturday night with me, is it?”

“I came to spend a lonely Saturday night with you because you’re my favorite sister in the world,” Juliet protests airily, dredging up her favorite argument from their childhood.

“Cute,” Rachel deadpans, obviously unimpressed, but the quirk of her lips betrays something of amusement, and Juliet grins at it, the flush in her cheeks turning pleased now, versus embarrassed. “That would mean so much more if Mom and Dad had even thought about having more children.”

“Hey,” Juliet gestures with a Wheat Thin between her fingers, “Dad almost knocked Larissa up the year after the wedding, remember?”

“That _so_ doesn’t count,” Rachel counters, turning up her nose in disgust; Juliet had never loved their stepmother, but Rachel outright _hated_ the woman.

“So,” Rachel picks up again, her tone serious and firm as she sets down her Cutco and leans against the counter, arms crossed as she stares Juliet down with a little bit of sternness, a little bit of knowing affection curling in her lips, “do you like him?”

“Do I like him?” Juliet parrots sarcastically as she swallows down the corner of a Triscuit. “What are we, twelve?”

She’s rewarded with square of cheese aimed expertly at her face; it connects, and sticks for a moment of the bridge of her nose before it falls to the countertop.

She picks it up and eats it triumphantly, which earns a laugh from her sister, and yes, in fact, she does feel about twelve years old at that exact moment.

“I like him, yes.” And that statement, little confession: it feels both wildly inadequate and far too soon, and it sends an uneasy, uncertain sort of flutter through her as she chews, swallows heavy and tight as the implications, the emotions constrict her throat.

The light in Rachel’s eyes as the words settle is almost worth saying them, almost worth the way she feels a little lightheaded. “And?” she asks earnestly, propping her elbows on the countertop and resting her chin on her palms as she stares Juliet down like they used to when Rachel had started dating Albert Winford in eighth grade and Juliet had wanted to know exactly how it felt to kiss a boy, or when Juliet made out behind the bleachers with Ryan Samson before sophomore Homecoming, and Rachel’d thought it was the most adorably romantic thing in the world and refused to let her sleep until she’d recounted every pointless detail, from the bruise the metal bars had left on her hip to the fact that there were Kit-Kat wrappers on the ground next to them.

And she wants to tell Rachel something, wants to give her a nugget of information, something good to keep the brightness in her gaze alive a little longer, but when she opens her mouth, she pauses; and she never gets any farther than that, because she closes her lips, parts them, closes them again, and realizes that to go any further, to say any more -- it would require a little more soul searching than she’s willing to engage right now. She doesn’t have the energy, doesn’t have the will; and she’s still absolutely incapable of outright lying to Rachel without giving herself away.

She snaps out of her daze when Rachel heaves a heavy sigh, catches the roll of her eyes as she straightens, groans and stretches backward with the heels of her palms digging hard into her back as she tries to loosen her muscles, release the tension pooled at the base of her spine; she grimaces, shudders the tightness away as best she can, and shrugs before she turns away, humming idly to herself as if nothing had happened, when Juliet had just sat before her wrestling with her own helping of internal conflict.

“Where are you going?” she asks, a little indignant, because she’s conflicted, damnit; she’s floundering and she’s flying and she’s lost, and Rachel’s cracking the seal on a bottle of water and humming to herself what sounds a little like an insurance company’s commercial jingle.

“Well,” Rachel huffs, “if you’re not going to spill the juicy details, I’m going to watch Big Brother and eat delicious food, because my feet hurt. And I’m pregnant, so I’m allowed to be a lazy glutton who watches reality television, and no one can judge me. At least for another few months.” She rubs her belly fondly before reaching over Juliet and grabbing for the cheese, balancing awkwardly on her toes while Juliet simply stares at her, still a bit baffled at why, exactly, her sister watches that godawful show.

“Oh, you wanted some?” Rachel asks innocently as Juliet stares after her as she carries the whole plate, cradled possessively against her chest and balanced against her baby bump with deft care as she saunters into the living room, still getting her sea legs, adjusting to the weight at her middle; “Sorry. Looks as if the cheese is spoken for.”

Juliet simply laughs, forgets about the pesky _‘and’_ that’s been tagged on the tail end of whatever it is she has with Nathan -- ‘relationship’ seems trite and uncertain, or maybe just too fucking terrifying to ponder just now -- and takes the knife and the cutting board to the sink, her sister’s off-hand comment of “There’s a can of Easy Cheese in the ‘fridge, though, that you’re more than welcome to,” echoing from the couch.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

She’s called in on an emergency procedure for a colleague's patient; she’s being briefed on the details of the case as she scrubs in, and even as a nurse ties her surgical mask at the base of her skull, she knows that it’s a long shot, even for her. They’re working with a three-percent survival rate, if they’re lucky; she’s beaten worse odds, she’ll grant it -- but it doesn’t look particularly good for either the mother or the baby.

She loses them both within the first fifteen minutes.

And it’s not as if she hadn’t lost patients before -- she’s always know that, doing what she does, and how she does it, she’ll always lose more than she saves. It’s who she is, in her bones.

It’s in her _bones_ ; and her bones fucking _ache_ with it.

She calls Nathan’s cell; the first time she’s used the number he gave her to call him, and not the other way around -- the first time, it goes straight to voicemail, and she closes her phone before the message even gets past the greeting.

She orders a latte on her way home, runs a palm over her face, but the coffee tastes stale, smacks too bitter. Goes down too rough. Burns.

She sits in her living room, wedges into the corner of her couch, and she contemplates calling Rachel for a dangerous minute before she realizes she only smells the air freshener, and the hint of her perfume on the fabric of the sofa; the scent is that of months before, like nothing had changed, and it’s in that moment that she realizes just how much has, just how different things are.

Everything’s changed, despite her efforts to the contrary.

Her phone fits, falls into the cup of her palm, the shape of it wavering as her eyes glaze over, watering with everything and nothing she can ever understand, everything she wants to pretend isn’t happening, not again. She focuses on anything but the way the gloves on her hands had snapped at her skin as she’d scrubbed out, stained red; the way her breath feels choked against the throb of her heart; the way his hands feel at her waist, just above her breasts -- comfort and safety and warmth.

Love's a funny thing -- terrible, insidious, heartsick thing. She can’t say the word anymore -- not like that, not out loud -- it still hurts too much where it should feel light, but she remembers what it’s like, what it does, how it swirls and dives and lingers, takes her by surprise. She remembers what love is like, and as much as she wants to hate the thing that’s heavy and whole inside her chest, wants it to be gone; as much as it kills her, she knows what it feels like.

She knows.

And before she realizes what’s happening, before she can make it stop, she’s bleeding, in her own way; tears streaming until she can’t make out her hand in front of her face as she wipes them away flowing freely -- and goddamn; but she’d tried so fucking _hard_.

She knows he’ll be back on Friday -- back, she reminds herself firmly, not home -- and she doesn’t know if that’s enough time; doesn’t think it’s soon enough.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

She’s not quite asleep -- not quite awake, either -- so the sounds of entrance, of approach are muddled in between dreaming and waking; they don’t catch her attention like they should.

She starts, for a moment, when his weight dips behind her in the bed, when he reaches for her; it’s the sound of his voice that keeps her from panic, though, a low greeting that jostles her away from the edge of dreaming. His palm on her hip, his chest braced against her shoulder blades, it sends a shiver through her as she feels the tension swell in her throat, strangle before it dissipates in a subtle, quiet sob that gets lost as he leans in, as she turns, pushes to sit on the mattress -- they meet in the middle, torsos pressed flush as she falls back, and he follows, caught between her legs, taking her mouth against his, her tongue alongside his own.

She aches lazily against him, her breasts loose underneath her sleepshirt, pushed to the sides as he lays his body against her chest, pillowed against his pecs as she ravages his mouth, clenches her thighs against his sides, feels the cut of his abs against the fleshy insides of her legs, hard where he meets her soft, and she swallows a moan when she rocks forward, forceful enough so that the crease of her gives against his growing erection, even through her panties.

Whatever little restraint, little hesitance remains between them: it’s gone between heady breaths as he pinches the edges of her underwear and slides them to her knees where they bend, leans in to inhale the scent of her as he presses a kiss -- a promise -- just behind the joint, lets his tongue slide dark against the fold of her skin. He slides his hands up against her thighs, bears some of her weight as she scoots up, back -- lets her spine align at the center of the headboard, banging the wood hard and hallow against the wall.

He’s in her quick -- the lapse between the last time they were together and the moment they’re in now too long, too lonely -- and if either of them had any presence of mind, the time it takes for the friction between them to drive them both to completion is nothing at all; to them, though, it lasts a lifetime, and their pulses hammer hard in their lips as they kiss through the shuddering descent, one unlike the other but thrumming, making their own kind of time.

“Maybe I should go away more often,” he whispers, chokes in strained tones as he fights for mastery, for the air in his lungs; “if this is the kind of welcome I receive when I get back.”

“No,” she moans, and he holds her closer like it’s instinct, second nature. “No.”

There’s no pretending this away anymore.

“Don’t go away.”

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

He’d asked her in passing, but something about his eyes when he’d said it had betrayed the weight of it, the importance; she hadn’t yet met anyone who knew him.

Funny; he’d never met anyone who knew her, either.

She wears a skirt and a nice blouse -- the gap between work and their reservations at seven shrinking with every signature she needed to give and case she had to review -- and Nathan, bless him, does nothing but smile when she answers the door and barely bothers to usher him in as she scrambles for wherever she left her purse.

He’s still grinning at her, leaning up against the walls as she smoothes her clothes, dressed in a suit that fits him just so, clings just right, and leaves her mouth a little dry as she stares openly for a good few moments before she blinks and looks away.

“Should I change?” she asks, suddenly self-conscious. He only crosses the distance between them and presses a quick kiss to each corner of her mouth; says she looks gorgeous, which in hindsight isn’t an answer at all.

She should really have changed.

If it’s not the impeccable black-and-white perfection of the establishment’s staff as they mill about, from the bartender to the maître d' and the valet out front nods at Nathan with a certain respect that Juliet can’t quite decipher, then it’s the veiled looks that shoot, crackle in their direction from every which way, from nowhere in particular, that bore under Juliet’s skin and fester, and she fidgets a bit even as Nathan puts a hand at the small of her back, settles her nerves.

She’s only just composed herself when they reach the small side room -- a private reservation, and she’s staring down the coldest eyes she’s ever seen.

“Nathan,” their owner says, his white mustache moving with the words, his teeth gleaming predatorily, as he claps a hand against Nathan’s shoulder. She barely hears as Nathan introduces him as Mr. Linderman. She hardly remembers to hold on her hand when he moves to shake it.

“Nonsense,” the man says, smile so tight it can be barely be called a smile. “Call me Daniel.”

She doesn’t.

Linderman asks inane questions of them both -- was there traffic on the way, wasn’t the weather gorgeous today -- speaking at his leisure before turning to the stoic-looking man and woman already seated at the table, introducing the middle-aged male as ‘my associate, Mr. Paik’ in an way that didn’t invite reaction or response, and ignoring the woman entirely. The woman, for her part -- a young lady of Asian descent, with a conservatively-cut evening gown and dangling crystals hanging from her ears – avoids making eye-contact of any kind, in a deliberate way that makes Juliet particularly uncomfortable.

Generally speaking, it’s a decent gauge of the evening as a whole.

The conversation ebbs and flows, with the occasional aside to translate for the mysterious Mr. Paik -- who seems to understand English well enough, but seem decidedly less interested in speaking it himself, for reasons Juliet can only guess at. For her part, she nods as she feels it’s appropriate, following the conversation as far as she can, cares to; most of it’s outside her realm of expertise, mostly investments and numbers versus what the investments themselves entail, but she manages an expression of polite disinterest that she hopes conveys something favorable -- she hasn’t felt the need to impress so keenly since she was in high school.

She scans the menu when the waiter comes, starts with her -- of _course_ ; the words _kiwi_ and _lime_ and _prawn_ jump out at her, and she immediately decides on that dish, in hopes that it’s not too pedestrian for their evening’s company. No one looks at her too strangely as orders -- or else, no more strangely than they had been already -- so she takes that as a good sign.

She almost feels human, really, until Linderman decides to turn talk to more personal matters, namely Nathan’s current pattern of residence.

“It’s best to take time now and again,” he comments sagely as Nathan mentions enjoying himself in Florida. “Overdoing things cannot lead to happiness, after all. But sooner or later, Nathan,” and here, he nods his head, his eyes taking on a sheen of wisdom that doesn’t quite soothe or suit, “you will have to come home.” _  
_  
Nathan extends the pause that lingers after with a sip from his drink. “I have a lot of options,” he finally replies, an answer that betrays nothing for sure, his eyes unreadable. “Here and there, wherever really. Think I’ll just cross those bridges when I get to them.”

“You should be at home, Nathan. Your family,” and Linderman stops, emphasizes the words in a way that seems to mean something layered, something hidden, “misses you.”

Nathan scoffs, takes a deeper drink from his glass. “They’ll survive,” he quips with unbridled sarcasm. “They’ve _been_ surviving, just fine.”

“Whatever distractions you’ve entertained here,” and Juliet doesn’t miss the rapid-fire flick of that frigid gaze in her direction, doesn’t miss the way it settles hard in her stomach and tight in her throat. “They’re fleeting, Nathan. Your future, your _birthright_ , is in New York. It always has been.”

“The future can change,” Nathan says shortly, and Juliet’s not sure if he leans toward her, or if she imagines it. “You of all people should know that.”

Linderman seems content to let the matter drop in favor of eating his caviar when it arrives, but the tension that pervades is stifling, and Juliet can barely bring herself to nibble at the crab cakes that the server sets before her.

It doesn’t take long before the thick unrest is shot through with urgency once more, as the course disappears steadily from the platters littering the table; and of course it’s Linderman who sets the strain alight.

“I do believe I could use a cigar before our meals arrive,” and even Juliet can tell it’s half posturing, half an excuse. “You’ll be good enough to indulge me, Nathan?” And Linderman stands, regal and overbearing, without apology to his guests or pause to see that Nathan would actually follow. Her eyes trail him as he exits the room for the corridor beyond, and she only turns away when Nathan lifts her hand and presses a kiss to the back of it. She wonders if this is how it would be with him, beyond the fantasy or the pretense; wonders if he’s cut from a different cloth, something more refined than what she’d come to expect.

She stares at her plate instead of at Nathan’s retreating form as he, too, leaves.

She samples the selection of hors d'oeuvres littering the table with careful elegance -- something that doesn’t come nearly as easily as it seems to for her companions; she chews slowly and bites daintily, and she has the strange feeling that she looks like a little girl trying to have tea with the Queen, having only practiced with a Fisher-Price tea set full of apple juice, serving her collection of stuffed animals.

She only manages to try three of the ornate morsels still left on the table before the weight becomes too much; cornered -- and a little bit uncomfortable, to be honest -- Juliet doesn’t wait for the man and his guest to make eye contact with her. She merely murmurs something ironic about needing to powder her nose, laughs in fractured, strained little bouts at a joke they might, but probably don’t find amusing as she stands and hurries from the room, the fall of her heels too loud in the silence.

It’s not that she means to find Nathan, really -- though she wants to, for certain; it’s more that he and Linderman are a bit hard to miss when she exits the private dining area and breathes a deep sigh against the scents of cooking things clashing with expensive perfumes.

She hears them -- tones, though, not words -- before she sees them, tucked around the corner. They’re pinned together, huddled against the wall near what she suspects must be the kitchen.

“You’re being childish, hiding here,” Linderman snaps in an undertone, all hints of civility gone. “Your... indiscretions-”

“You can stop there.” And she’s never heard Nathan sound quite that harsh, that cold. “I somehow remember you telling me once that I should mind my own affairs. I’d suggest you did the same.”

Linderman leans in closer, drops his voice to a dangerous hush that Juliet has to strain to hear. “Need I remind you that you work for me, Nathan?”

“I _work_ for you,” Nathan spits, and she can see the twisted lines of his face in the shadows. “My life outside of that is my own.”

“Your family has been _my_ family for decades, Nathan.” He looks like he means to say more, but Nathan neck is bowed low, his face turned to look Linderman in the eyes, gaze serious and stony as he forces his words past a rigid jaw, the syllables clipped beyond the point of debate.

“What I choose to do is none of your concern, do you understand?”

Linderman looks at him, eyes hard, for the sparest moment before he sneers, lets loose a bitter laugh. “Don’t be so eager to bite the hand that feeds,” he admonishes shrewdly, his threatening features narrowed with a laughing sort of cruelty that sends shivers down Juliet’s spine.

Nathan, though, seems only offended, only enraged. “I don’t need your money.”

“You need your father’s,” Linderman parries, and there’s something knowing in his eyes, something that lights the flames brighter in the Nathan’s.

“I don’t _need_ anyone’s charity.”

“You’ll have to hope, at least, for Heidi’s won’t you?” And if the name, and the gravity, the sense of a weighty blow attached to it, hadn’t been enough to send Juliet’s stomach plummeting, the way Nathan flinches, goes silent as the fire in his gaze turns frosty, lethal, and the color drains just a little from his face -- well, that would have been plenty.

“You’re crossing a line,” Nathan retorts, and his voice doesn’t sound anything like him, all thin and sharp like a blade drawing blood.

Linderman doesn’t seem fazed; he merely mocks with a withering, sparkling kind of glare. “What would _she_ say, I wonder, if she saw you? If she knew?”

Nathan shakes his head, turns, runs a hand over his face, and even from a distance, Juliet can see the way it shakes. “She’s in no position to judge, anymore.”

“Isn’t she?” Linderman baits.

“No.” And Nathan’s tone is final, livid. “She isn’t.”

“We’ll just have to see about that, won’t we?” Nathan looks as if he’s about to walk away, but Linderman grabs his arm and keeps him there; Juliet, for reasons she doesn’t comprehend, decides to make good on her claims of needing the ladies room and ducks away before they see her, before they notice she was ever there at all.

She stands before the mirror, one hand clenched against the smooth marble sink while the other rests high on her chest as she catches her breath, revels in the deep soak of oxygen in her lungs. She blinks at herself, runs water she doesn’t dare to touch; tells herself that eavesdropping is frowned upon for good reasons, and she needs to let it go. She doesn’t know what she heard -- what it means, if anything. She sighs and splashes water across the flush of her cheeks, mindless of the way it tracks through her foundation, runs lines across her mask.

It’s only after repeating over and over, soundlessly as she moves her lips at her reflection, that she simply doesn’t _want_ to know, that she’s able to make her legs move, make them carry her to the door and back to her dinner.

The food is there, she notices first; the next thing she sees is the way Nathan lights up when she walks in the room, and it puts her at ease for the moment, to see how he seems to really _want_ her there. The shrimp is light, slick on her tongue, the flavors rich, full and cascading with each bite, and she thinks it might be okay, thinks she might be able to last out the night.

Until she glances up, unawares -- put a little more at ease by Nathan’s hand on her thigh beneath the table, out of sight -- and catches Linderman staring at her from across the table, the food in her mouth turning to ash in the heat, the hate in his gaze.

She tries to smile when Nathan asks her if she’s alright, tries to graciously deflect his attention as she sets her fork down and folds the napkin on her lap; she tells him she’s full and hopes he believes her.

Frankly, though, she's lost her appetite.

 _  
_~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

The day had been a rough one to begin with: Nathan having to leave unexpectedly after the infamous Linderman Affair -- as she liked to think of it, at least -- being the most obvious of her problems. He’d promised to be back by week’s end, asked her to water his plants -- or else, those of her plants that were now in his home -- and kissed her for a good ten minutes before and after the quickie they’d managed in the car when she’d convinced him to leave the driver and let her drop him at Departures; all in all, despite the sort of empty, hollow feeling at her center, it was a a good enough goodbye.

And while it should comfort her, she supposes -- that he blew her a kiss as he walked into the airport, that his eyes behind his glasses looked genuinely sad to leave her behind -- it does the exact opposite; it reminds her, once again, that they’ve never talked about what this is, what they have or don’t have, what it could be, might be.

Could _become_.

When she’d gotten into work, things hadn’t much improved. The coffee machine was broken, and she hadn’t had enough time to so much as stop for something wildly caloric and shot through with espresso from a drive-thru after getting Nathan to his terminal. She’d been swamped with patients on the one day she’d set aside for shoring up some loose ends on her research -- the very research that needed to be summarized in a draft to send for publication by the end of next week. Her labs we taking forever, and the damn techs were gabbing without working significantly more than their paychecks warranted, she was sure of it. She’d run out of birth control, and had forgotten to call in her scrip.

Her day had brightened when Rachel stopped in for her appointment -- not that she didn’t have enough doctors, as Juliet often reminded her, but she was adamant that her sister see to her on at least a semi-regular basis, and Juliet wasn’t particularly inclined to argue; the first time she smiled since that morning was when Rachel started griping on how damn cold the ultrasound gel always seemed to be, and simple as it was, it seemed like a turning point in her day, her mood. She bought a can of soda from the machine with enough caffeine in it to keep her going for the rest of the afternoon. She convinced a few colleagues to take some of the afternoon patients off her hands so that she could fit in an hour or two to work on her article. Even the labs she’d rushed for Rachel had been completed ahead of schedule. Things seemed to be looking up.

Scanning the results, though; she wishes they hadn’t.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

“So, doc,” Rachel rubs an idle hand across the ever-growing swell of her belly as Juliet walks in, lets her hand linger on the handle of the door, the lean of her weight more than actual intention of force pushing the door closed behind maybe. The cool metal seeps beneath her pores as she grips it harder, stills as the latch clicks shut, lets the contact, the smoothness under her palms steady her, soothe her as she eyes the results in her hands; “what’s the verdict?”

The day had been rough to begin with. She lets her eyes scan over the paperwork in her hand, familiar numbers and levels she’s had memorized since med school, hoping that with one more look, one more cursory glance, the words and the digits won’t imply that possibilities they do; that the longer she looks, something might change.

It doesn’t.

“What’s your schedule look like later this week?”

Rachel’s expression doesn’t dampen by degrees; it crumbles in on itself, a collapse, and it’s more than heartbreaking to watch, because regardless of everything, she knows that Rachel still hadn’t trusted this, still wasn’t willing to believe in a miracle after so many promises had been broken, after so many chances had been lost. “Why,” she asks immediately, her voice tight and her eyes narrowed, lips thin, “what’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” Juliet answers, glances up and makes eye contact for the barest of instants before she has to look away. She doesn’t know, yet -- it might be a bad read; she thinks back to the number of technical errors and inaccuracies that she’s encountered in her career, just how many people have been the victims of clerical errors or technical malfunctions, but it’s not enough -- not enough to quell the lump her throat, to calm the heavy throb of her pulse as she tucks her hair behind her ear, a nervous tick. She hopes Rachel wasn’t looking, didn’t see it. “Just a few things on your labs, is all. I want to run a few more tests.” She tries to lean against the wall with casual nonchalance, like she’s not panicking inside. She tries to remember how she keeps composed for every other patient she sees, everyone who isn’t her _sister_ , her only _real_ family. “I just want to make sure nothing’s going on that shouldn’t be.”

“Is it serious?” Rachel’s not stupid. She’s more observant than any one person has a right to be, and she knows Juliet, _knows_ her. Denial had obviously failed; perhaps damage control was her best course of action, at this point.

“It’s probably nothing,” Juliet backtracks, forces a smile, infuses every syllable with false confidence that she tries to keep steady, keep sure as her lips form the words, as her voice threatens to waver. “I just want to be sure.”

“Juliet,” Rachel starts, and there they are -- the beginnings, the first hints of tears gathering at the corners of her eyes as she blinks, keeps her eyes closed as the color drains from her cheeks and she steels herself, forces through tight lips. “Don’t...” She takes a shaky breath, squeezes her eyes, exhales; looks at Juliet with grim acceptance, prepared for the worst, and even if Juliet could have managed to tell her the possibilities before -- the possibilities that would have been probabilities with anyone else -- there’s no way she can do it now. “Is it serious?”

She sits next to Rachel on the exam table. “You’re my sister,” she says simply, as if it’s an explanation; and it is, it truly is. “And this...” she slings an arm around Rachel’s shoulders and pulls her close, kisses the top of her head with all of the love and solidarity she can possibly convey. “This is something that’s never been done before. It’s risky, Rache. I want to make sure nothing goes wrong.”

Rachel sniffles, leans into Juliet’s embrace. “You didn’t answer my question.” And Juliet knows it, may have been more cognizant of it -- may have tried better to mask her evasion -- if she weren’t trying to remember the phone number of Rachel’s oncologist.

“It’s not serious.” Yet. “And it might be nothing.” But it isn’t. She’s pretty damn sure that it isn’t.

It has to be nothing. It _has_ to be.

The sinking in her stomach, though, as she gathers her sister’s hands between her own, notes how cool they are at the palms -- clammy against the heat of her wrists, but alive, _alive_ ; the sinking tells her otherwise.

“And if it isn’t nothing? We’ll fix it.” Because that’s what she does, is fix people. Fix people who are beyond repair, beyond hope. She _fixes_ people.

Because if she can’t fix them, what use is she? What’s the point of her at all, if she can’t fix what’s broken?

If she can’t fix her fucking _sister_ , after _everything_ , what was the point of any of it?

“So there’s no need to worry, okay?” She strokes an open palm rhythmically over Rachel’s almost-bob, combing through the locks, losing her fingers in the soft wave of curls. Rachel doesn’t move, doesn’t speak, and she’s tense enough to break beneath Juliet’s touch, about to shatter at just too harsh a motion, too brash a word.

“Okay?” Juliet repeats, her hand stilling, cupping the back of Rachel’s head and holding her just that little bit closer.

“I’m just...” Rachel whispers, all but broken -- and it’s Juliet’s _fault_. “I’m scared.”

“I know.”

“I mean,” and Rachel sniffs, all the feeling she’s holding back, that’s pooled hard behind her eyes -- bloodshot, without any salt on her cheeks. “At first, I was just so shocked that it worked. And I was so happy. But now...” She swipes her forearm across both eyes, dabs at the tears before they have a chance to escape, to shatter whatever illusion is left. “Now all I can think of are all the things that could go wrong.”

“Shhh...” Juliet soothes as Rachel starts to shake, as her eyes clench and she falls back into the safety of Juliet’s shoulder, buried away from everything, everyone. “Look at me.” Rachel stays put, and Juliet brings a hand to her cheek, notes the dampness, the fact that they’ve both lost something precious in this moment -- a sense of idealism, a level of hope they’ll never reach again.

“Look at me,” she urges again, runs her hand tenderly across Rachel’s jaw until she looks up, meets Juliet’s eyes, and Juliet doesn’t have to feign anything, doesn’t have to manufacture the warmth in her gaze, the affection and the kind of foolhardy, fathomless devotion that only her sister has ever been able to inspire. “I am going to get you through this,” she says firmly, keeps their eyes locked tight as slides a hand down to Rachel’s belly. “Both of you. I will do whatever I have to. I promise. I’m going to make sure that you get to be a mother, Rachel,” she vows, knowing it’s hopeless, knowing she’ll fail; never caring, not once. “Whatever it takes.”

“All right?” And Rachel nods, breathes, speaks without sound before choking on a sob; she shakes her head, and Juliet rubs her thumb patiently, rhythmically against Rachel cheek until she heaves a gasping, shuddering breath that catches, but endures.

“All right,” she trembles, and Juliet just keeps her breathing calm, lets Rachel match her own to the cadence. “All right.”

Rachel nods idly, silently for another few minutes, building enough resolve for the both of them as they sit there, one holding the other -- and Juliet draws on that solidity, that certainty, even as it flickers, shivers; as always, it’s Rachel who’s the strong one, even if she doesn’t know it.  
 __

 __~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

She’s distracted, unsettled -- the thought of Rachel still weighing heavily on her thoughts, on her heart atop everything else; she doesn’t think before she has the key in the lock and the door already opened that Nathan won’t be back until tomorrow, and running to him for comfort, for a place to shut the world away, would require more miles than she can afford to cross.

She sighs heavily, leans in against the kitchen counter, flips her PDA out, and runs the stylus over the screen. She has exactly three hours before she needs to meet with Mittelos, let them down gently -- she thinks it’s probably for the best.

She grabs a glass from the cupboard, fills it with tap water, testing the temperature with her fingertip, interrupting the spray and scattering droplets to the sides. She darts around to the spider-plant the in corner, its leaves crisp and yellowed from too much sun and not enough love, to the African violets above the television, back over to the prayer plant -- which sadly wasn’t “praying,” and in fact looked rather pathetic and wilted -- before the rhythmic, high-pitched beeping from Nathan’s landline answering machine got the better of her.

With a sigh, she walks to the display on the machine -- only one missed called, which makes sense, seeing as Nathan’s mobile is his main form of communication -- and she vows silently to only let the message play far enough to skip it, to stop that infernal beeping so that it doesn’t split her head in two before she leaves; she promises herself she won’t listen, before she ever presses the playback button. It’s a promise she means to keep.

Until she hears the voice on the recording; then it’s a promise she breaks.

 _“Nathan,”_ and the voice -- a female voice -- is exasperated, devastated, disappointed, hurt -- all at once. _“It’s me. Look...”_ the woman trails off, and something hangs in the silence, the rustle of static on the recording -- shifts and coils in Juliet’s stomach.

 _“Nathan, I know things between us haven’t been good lately, but we’ve been together for a long time.”_ She tries to think of all the ways that two people can be together -- business partners, friends -- but she doesn’t quite buy it, doesn’t quite believe, and the doubt runs cold in her blood as she fights the urge to turn it off, to delete the message and forget the unforgettable.

 _“And I know you. I know you, and I know how much you like being away on business.”_ She flinches at the tone, the intimacy and the resignation that bleed across the line; she can’t help it. _  
_  
 _“Because you don’t like it. You hate being away on business, Nathan. So, you being gone for the better part of the past seven months?”_ Had it only been seven months? Had it been seven months already? _“That was the first red flag. And I’m not stupid,”_ and there’s a sigh that follows, that echoes, filled with things that deepen the fracture gaping in her chest.

“I’m not an idiot. I know what it means when I see my husband three times in the space of half a fucking year.” There are more words, more things said, but it’s that single word that takes the fracture and cracks it in two, leaves her reeling and falling and exposed, clutching at the ledge of the countertop just to stay standing.

There are questions that cycle through her mind. Of course there are questions.

Only it feels like she has the answers already, without asking them. She’s never felt so sure of what she doesn’t know.

The woman, on the machine; it’s strange, but she _sounds_ like a Heidi.

She grabs for her keys and leaves just as she entered; she doesn’t lock the door.


	5. Chapter 5

“I don’t understand why I can’t stay until after my sister delivers her child,” Juliet protests, resists the urge to check her voicemail -- she still hasn’t heard back from Rachel’s oncologist’s office, and it’s been three days already. “It’s barely two months, what difference can that make?”

“To the women under our care,” Richard Alpert counters sagely, his hands lingering on the files -- so many files of so many women, all suffering, all on the brink of loss and fear and death, and there are so many failures in her life, so many things she’s let slide, let fall, let break; and Alpert must know it, too, to draw her attention until she worries her lip between her teeth to the point of raw, metallic agony -- until she knows there’s no way she can add another failure. Not now. “The difference can mean life and death.” Then he adds -- gently, though it has the exact opposite effect. “They’ve already been waiting quite some time, after all.”

She lets herself think like a fool for a moment then; lets herself wonder what things would be like, how life might be now, if she’d simply accepted the offer that day in the morgue.

“You have an incredible gift, Dr. Burke,” Richard tells her, his voice full of something like honest regard, and where it might have baffled her, might have been gratifying; now, it just hurts. “You’ve given hope to the hopeless. You give _life_ ,” he reaches out, and brushes comforting fingertips over her hand -- it should be inappropriate, forward, untoward, but it isn’t; it breaks something in her, instead -- something too dangerously close to resolve for comfort. “Let us help you share that gift with the world.”

She’s silent for a solid minute before Alpert leans in, his voice an octave lower -- quiet and grave. “If we told you that we had the resources to ensure your sister’s recovery, and the successful delivery of her son,” she says slowly, his eyes fixed hard upon her as her gaze flashes to meet his, narrowed in disbelief; “would you reconsider?”

She swallows once, twice, again; forces out dry and parched because there’s nothing to help it, nothing to soothe it; “Excuse me?”

“If we could guarantee that your sister’s cancer could be cured, and that she’d deliver a healthy baby boy in approximately seven weeks’ time,” Richard repeats carefully, starkly, without aplomb or irony, “would you reconsider our offer?”

“My sister is in remission,” Juliet says, a recycled response that’s half self-preservation, half-wishful thinking, but also mostly denial, and it stabs her through the chest with a force she can’t endure.

“Are you quite certain of that?”

She bites the tip of her tongue to keep the tears at bay, the rage in check; she doesn’t bother to ask how he knows -- there’s more here than she cares to understand, and digging for answers where she’s not welcome has only served her poorly, of late; it’s only hardened her heart.

“No one can guarantee that,” she breathes, a hiss through her teeth as she turns wild eyes, pained eyes to Richard’s open ones; his sad ones. “Not you, not anyone.” She shakes her head, feels her stomach clench; she’s nauseous, and her vision’s blurring with more than just tears, because she’s while she hasn’t quite learned to judge a lie, she’s decent at knowing the truth when she hears it. “Only God can make those kinds of promises.”

And strike her dead where she stands, but there’s _truth_ in his voice when he answers:

“I assure you, we can.”

She says nothing, reels with all of the thoughts of _impossible_ and _maybe_ and _what if_ that threaten to catch and choke her, send her to an early grave with the way they race in her blood. “We want you, Dr. Burke.”

“It’s Dr. Carlson, now, actually.” She doesn’t know why she says it, doesn’t know what prompts the comment at all; but it feels right, in the moment, like a feather lifting from her shoulders amidst the weight of the world -- the straw that broke the camel’s back sliding away before the cracking, the shatter.

“Dr. Carlson,” he amends, nodding, like he knows a secret now that lives inside her name. He heaves a soft sigh, and stands slowly, his eyes flickering to the window before he gathers his folders, his case files, and returns his gaze to her. “I’ll be in the area for another week,” he says, a deadline if she ever heard one. “You have my number. Think about it.” The sound of his shoes against the floor is deafening as he walks to the door, pauses before opening it. “We don’t make offers to just anyone,” and it sounds like a warning. “And we don’t make our promises lightly.”

And that sounds like a sign.

The door is nearly closed behind him before she calls out.

“Six months, Dr. Alpert?”

It’s as if he’d been expecting it, had been listening for the change of her heart, because the cadence of his footfalls is almost practiced, almost planned, like he’d meant to turn back. “Six months,” he reiterates, leans back against the door so that it closes behind him once more. “Unless you decide to stay with us longer.”

“And my sister?”

“She’ll be well-cared for.” Alpert walks closer, sits down closer to her now, in her space, intimate in a sense that conveys a trust that sinks deep, that makes her want to believe, for all that shouldn’t. “I give you my word.”

“Will I be able to speak with her?” Juliet asks, her eyes red-rimmed but dry as she meets his gaze. “Will I be able to know when my nephew is born?”

“Our location is extremely remote.” She turns away from him, frustrated -- she’s heard this spiel before; they live in the fucking twenty-first century, what the hell does “remote” even mean, anymore?

The hitch in her breath, the way it catches; it must be audible, obvious, because he leans in closer and covers her hand with his own -- tentative, but sympathetic. Reassuring. “If I stayed on the mainland until she delivers, would that comfort you?”

She blinks at him for a good ten seconds, processing the proposal. “I...” she starts, but the offer, this man’s offer -- a man who doesn’t know her and doesn’t owe her anything -- knocks her off-balance for the moment more, and it’s not about her. “You’d do that?” she asks, voice small, a little wondering. “That would be okay?”

He smiles, and it’s almost as if it’s weary beneath all of the warmth, like a few extra months would mean nothing in the grander scheme of things for the man at her side. “It’d be my pleasure.”

“But you said you’d only be here for another week.”

“We need you,” Richard answers simply. “Some exceptions can be made.”

She stares at her hands for a good, long moment, studying the small lines, the ones that only reveal themselves in the right sort of light; she wants to second guess this, wants to put it off just a little bit longer, but she can’t. She won’t.

“It’s not forever, Juliet,” Richard reminds her kindly, a firm presence at her side; on her side. “Nothing’s forever.”

She breathes deeply, lets the air out slow. “Can you,” she tries, takes another long, deliberate breath. “If you stay, would I…” She looks up at him, her lashes clumped, a mess. “Could you,” and his face is kind, like he pities her, like he wants to help, and she doesn’t know how to take it, how to handle it in the moment; she’s adrift drowning on dry land.

“Could I see him?” she finally asks, her mind’s eye focused beyond the now on a little baby boy all pink and soft and warm, a little tuft of hair on his head and her dad’s nose, her mom’s lips, Rachel’s smile. “After he’s born,” she trails off, lost in the thought of it, of family and blood and miraculous, heart-stopping _life_. “Just, a picture... something...”

“I’m sure I can arrange something,” he assures her softly, his hand on her shoulder for a moment as she nods; nods before she can speak it, say it out loud.

“All right.” It seems a little like selling her soul; though selling her soul seems a little anti-climactic, all things considered -- draining, but not deadly.

“You’re making a selfless decision, Dr. Carlson.” And maybe she is; but it sure as hell feels like running, like caving -- giving in. “Believe me when I say that it won’t go unnoticed. Nor unrewarded.”

And that should sound more ominous than it does; frankly, she’s beyond the point of caring. She’s tired; she’s done.

It’s done.

“When do you need me to leave?”

“Ideally? As soon as you’re ready.” He clears his throat as she props an elbow on the table, holds her head up in her hand. “We can arrange for transport within the week.”

She nods, mute; ready, and yet completely unprepared.

“Can I ask you a personal question?” And she looks up, pins him with a stare that sees past him, through him, and hopes it looks like consent, even if it’s not supposed to.

“I’ll admit, I haven’t been entirely confident of your interest in our offer. You’ve kept us waiting quite some time.” He cocks his head, considers her, and she wonders, idly, what it is that he sees. “What changed your mind?”

The words come before there are thoughts to fuel them.

“Everything changes, Dr. Alpert. And I suppose it’s time I started owning that fact for myself.”

She wills her legs to be steady, and stands to leave.  
 __

 __~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

It’s not a decision, so much as an obligation, an imperative to be waiting at Nathan’s when he gets back. The fact that she’d called, left a blank message on his machine as she waits in the wings with the beeping matching her pulse in thirds, just so he’d have to hear the words that came first before her own silence would play -- well, that was more like poetic justice than anything else.

She walks to the kitchen in her socks, silent, just as the message is wrapping up, just before hers begins.

“What was this, Nathan?” she asks, shocks his attention toward where she stands; he looks shellshocked, unhinged. “What was it, just…” She gestures absently, eyes dead; everything’s just a little bit dead as she considers him, sees the anguish sluice from him -- can’t bring herself to care, to not. “Just a game, for you?” She laughs, sobs; looks at him, and anywhere but. “Just... cheap entertainment while you were away from your _wife_?”

The word chokes, and she can barely see for the red, for the tears she won’t let fall.

“No,” Nathan says, taking a step, stopping, taking another step -- almost hesitant, almost scared, dodging the falling pieces of everything, _everything_ , as it breaks. “God, no.” And he looks at her as if she’s the only thing, the only thing that matters, and Juliet -- she can’t help herself, it just hurts all the more.

“Jesus,” Nathan says, closes the distance between them with a single glide of motion, desperate. “Fuck, Juliet, no.” And he reaches up, hands hovering at the sides of her face for a moment before he touches, takes. “No, that was never, this was never about her. This had nothing to do with her.”

It takes her the moment between the contact and the words for her to flinch, to pull back; to turn venom on him, because it’s easier, darker -- it hurts deeper and harder than anything else she has.

“You’re her _husband_ ,” she spits, lashes, presses into the stove as she spins away from him in a rage. “It has _everything_ to do with her!”

“Juliet, listen to me,” he begs, and he looks genuine, looks crushed, grasping at straws, and there’s sympathy there, elusive, as he approaches her with open palms and wide, sad eyes. “Jules,” he says slowly, his voice barely there, “Jules, listen. I didn’t... I didn’t love--”

There’s sympathy, somewhere, but it sure as hell isn’t here.

“Do you really think I’m going to fall for the victim ploy, Nathan?” she snaps, jerks against the way he’s close, the way he halts mid-step in the face of her scorn; hair falling into her face, making her feel wild, feral, unchained. “That I’ll buy your sob story of some... loveless marriage where you--”

“It’s not a ploy,” he cuts her off, stays put even as his voice reaches out for her, pleads with her to understand, to listen. “I didn’t love her. I tried to. I believed I did, for a while.” He looks rueful, melancholy, and the torrent of feeling in her chest spirals, surges in response. “But she was the man my father wanted for me: a trophy wife to carry heirs to the family business, the family name, to carry on the Petrelli legacy. Hell, she was my mother, up and down.” He shakes his head, passes a frantic hand across his features, and she can see the little tremble in his fingers, the shake in his wrist. “His tastes don’t change, don’t age. Sometimes I wonder if that was part of the reason he was so keen on me proposing to her. For his own... amusement.” He shivers, cups a hand against his mouth and traces long fingers around the shape of his lips.

“She’s a good woman,” he says, forces out like he wishes she weren’t. “But she was never... she was never what I...”

Juliet scoffs, opens her mouth, but he’s quicker, and she’s tired. So fucking _tired_.

“I should have told you,” he says, solid -- fact. “I mean, it was something...” He shakes his head again, eyes darting like cornered prey, like he’s counting the last minutes before the end, and the precipice of it lingers behind Juliet’s heart as she watches the fear, the regret swirl in his gaze. “It was already over, for all intents and purposes, I swear. But I should have told you. When this got... when we got... when it became serious, I should have said something. I just...”

His face crumples for a second -- everything bare and exposed, but gone too quick to read the whole. “It was hard to tell, when we got serious. It was kind of like it’d always been serious, except... I don’t know. I’m not trying to make excuses,” he says quickly, blinks rapidly as he looks at her, flails for footing. “It sounds like I am, but I’m not.” He breathes hard, turns to brace his hands against either side of the sink basin, staring down and catching his breath; if she looks hard enough, in the shaft of light that hits him just so, she can see the throb of his pulse at his neck, heavy and harsh beneath the skin.

“It’s just... I never meant to hurt you.” He lets out a long hiss of a breath from between pursed lips, looks at her from the shadows, bleeding in dark shades without color as she takes him in, as she wishes it all away, back to how it was; wishes it had never ended, or began.

“Regardless of anything else,” he says softly, taking another step toward her; and this time, she waits him out -- unsure, unsettled, torn apart below the surface. “I never meant to hurt you.”

He reaches for her, thinks better of it this time, his hands hanging limp and pathetic in midair, half-way to her own. “I’m not expecting you to forgive me,” he says, a bare scratch of sound against his throat as he hands his head, and in that moment she’s disgusted, betrayed, denied, enraged, agonized, impassioned, and so filled with need that she doesn’t know what else to do; doesn’t know what else to say or be or want, ever again.

She reaches out, grasps Nathan’s wrists between her thumbs and ring fingers, savors the jackhammer of radial pulse.

“Shut up.”

He blinks, maybe recognizes hate and love and blank, unfeeling apathy, exhaustion in her gaze; maybe not. “What?” he stammers, following her touch at his hands, only barely staring straight into her eyes. “Jules, I--”

“Just shut up.” She drops his hands with a force, a thrust, reaches higher -- frames his face. “Shut _up_ , Nathan.” Her hands are hard, fingers firm on his jaw as she grabs, makes him watch her, and there’s something close to surprise, more like apprehension in his gaze as he watches her, lips slack. “Stop talking. Stop making excuses. Just shut your goddamned _mouth_ ,” and she shuts it for him in a crash before he can protest, defy -- closes his mouth around hers without finesse or regard, and takes what _she_ wants for once.

To his credit, he puts up a token protest; doesn’t speak, but refuses to touch, to kiss back, to give in for the longest of moments that drag, useless and weighty -- inevitable. His hand is twined around her middle in an instant, as soon as the dam breaks, and his hand is at the waist of her jeans, sliding tight beneath the denim and teasing at the outline, the stitching of her panties; she bites against the swell of her bottom lip, tastes blood against her teeth when his fingertip traces at the cleft of her through the cotton -- forgiveness, and a promise in his eyes when he finally meets her stare.

She tilts her hips, lets his hot digit stray as the material shifts, as flesh meets flesh in a tease, and fuck, she can’t believe she’s doing this, can’t believe; she's not the woman she always thought she was.

He strokes her, slick and graceless -- dirty -- and she closes her eyes, pretends the context and the meaning and the heartache away; she breathes, and hears only the thrum of her blood, the soft hush of her breath as she moans, the hum of the refrigerator pressed at her side as she hangs, hovers on the edge of the counter -- and they’ve come full circle, in their own strange way.

She does her best not to cry in the comedown.

“The machine kept...” she gasps, just before she catches her breath -- leaning far too heavily on the countertop, against Nathan’s weight where his hardened, untended length presses against the heat at her thigh -- unsure why she’s even bothering before she finishes, lamely; “beeping. I didn’t...”

“I know.” And there’s fire in her eyes, because she doesn’t owe him -- neither apology nor explanation -- there’s nothing she owes him anymore, if ever there was. “If I thought it would help,” he recoups quickly, his hand burning the back of her neck, “I’d say I was sorry.”

She ducks her head, pulls away, but his touch is firm now, insistent. He cradles her close with more tenderness, with more need than he’s ever shown her before.

“I filed for a divorce,” he says plainly, his eyes never leaving the crown of her head; she tenses, thinks about looking up at him; thinks twice. “That’s why I was in New York. She was served this afternoon,” he adds, almost wonderingly, like the truth is something he’d never dared to dream into reality, “probably after I was already in the air.”

To say that it puts her off-balance, that small confession, is a glaring sort of understatement. “You,” she starts, can’t finish; she doesn’t know if her eyes can grow any wider for what she thinks he’s implying, _can’t_ be _implying_...

“Don’t.” He must see the change, the shift in her; he must know her well, by now. “I didn’t mean... I didn’t mean it like that.” He shakes his head, doesn’t seem to quite know _what_ he means at all. “I don’t expect anything from you,” he clarifies, his eyes open and honest and dark as he looks down, studies his hands. “This was a long time in coming.”

She doesn’t reply; doesn’t say or do anything -- and it doesn’t seem like he expects her to, even if he hopes.

“My father wants me to run for the state senate,” he finally says, his voice strained, quiet, dull and defeated in a way he shouldn’t be, in a way she can’t reconcile with _him_ , even now. “My mother’s got delusions of the presidency. I’ve buried myself work to avoid going home to my wife since a month after we got married,” and with the way he sounds so bitter, she doesn’t question that it’s true -- for whatever it’s worth, at this point. “And when I came down here, I thought it would just be a quick respite, a break, a breath before the plunge.

He looks at her now, looks at _her_ , _in_ her, and she has to weather the shiver that tears through her, has to be careful so he doesn’t see. “But then it _was_ the plunge,” he breathes leaning in close to her, leisurely and remorseful, “and the fall and I couldn’t, _wouldn’t_ break away from it.”

She feels the brush of his chest when he sucks in a breath, lets it out careful against her cheek. “Because you were the first breath, and all the breaths after.”

The anger wars with pity, the hurt with want, and she doesn’t know what to feel, what to say.

“Stay,” he whispers, raises goosebumps at the point of her jaw, the tender spot below her ear. “Just…” He comes close, aims to drop his lips there, but then pulls back, meets her eyes again: weary, finished, worn. “Stay.”

“I...” she fumbles, heart still swift and leaden beneath her ribs, the wetness between her thighs like a mark, a scarlet letter, never seen. “I need...”

She doesn’t finish the thought, doesn’t have to; she slips away without difficulty -- his hold on her wavering now, broken -- and resolutely refuses to look where his eyes burn against her back as she leaves the room in retreat.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

She thinks about locking the door after she’s already in the shower -- wishes she had, but can’t bring herself to step out from under the spray; she’s a little lost in the subtle scents of Nathan’s soap, his shaving gel, in all the sounds of rushing, riotous blood against her ears -- deafening, frightening, and her pulse only quickens to hear it, pushing at the breaking point until it starts to frays at the seams. Her chest heaves, burns, a dying star against her ribs, and she cannot breathe, the bruises of her heart against her lungs like broken glass, broken veins. Blood chokes her, and there is only the beat, the beat, oh _God_ , and there is nothing in the world but its crescendo, its agonizing ascension, and the world slows, dissolves, as her pulse rattles on with the promise of dark things -- end things.

She laughs, sobs, loses the boundary between the two, and wonders what made her think that this would help her escape. _  
_  
She’s hunched beneath the torrent when the door slides open, when cool air wafts against her naked flesh and then disappears, never there; a presence at her back, hesitant and yet inescapable, taking its place.

She doesn’t speak, he doesn’t ask; his fingertips sink into the give of her thighs as he teases, stokes the skin. He pulls her close and she doesn’t resist, doesn’t do anything -- just gives in, because there’s nothing else left. Nothing gold can stay, and all that; and this was never really gold, she thinks, just something warm and beautiful, for a time, that was never meant to last.

His mouth, when it sucks sharp marks against her neck, is Elysium, the seventh circle of Hell; and she will not, _can_ not want this, but she does. _Christ_ , but she _does_.

His hands come up around her breasts, cup but don’t move, like he’s just holding on, holding close -- needs to feel as he breathes heavy, in and out against the curve of her shoulder, the soft brush of his lashes like the wash of feathers on her skin. They stand like that for what seems like an eternity, her heart thrumming heavy between his hands and his pulse bearing down against the hard line of her spine: the water never grows cold; the smell of chemicals and bleach oddly heady in the steam around them, as if something knew before they did that they would need cleansing, need to forget.

It’s a mutual tug, a gasp that turns sour, desperate as she turns, rubs her nipples against his as her eyes sting, as she trembles. His hands are on her shoulder blades, pushing her as much as gaining purchase, grabbing hold. When they move together, a single thread of this world pulled taut between them, she feels as if she might tear in two, might melt and topple and collapse, lose everything in the downpour; when his length presses against the fold of her, lined against her heat, she gasps, and once he pushes in, swallows her moan with his lips on hers -- everything dissolves, fades, crumbles when she breathes out; nothing left to breathe back in.

The extinction of desire is Nirvana.

She clenches her eyes tight, can’t watch -- neither of them notices when their rhythm dies, dismantled into sudden jerks and clawing, needing, when her spasms turn to shudders, to shivers, to trembling, aching sobs; when the hot streams of water tracing the contours of her face taste saltier, sweeter, dissolve into tears. It all spirals to the basin, sinks the same below the drain.

Her pulse hums, breaks against the cadence of her panting, the smack of skin on skin; the water, rain on her bare shoulders almost soothing, almost damning. She steadies herself against him, palms up in surrender, and it’s with a grim satisfaction that she catches the barest flutter of a racing, desperate beat echoing through the skin and the sheen of his chest as he thrusts; she’s done something right, she guesses, even when it’s all so very wrong.

She blinks once as she feels, knows he’s reaching his peak; watches as his eyes roll back a little, and realizes with a sickening twist that every promise that’s ever been made and tucked deep in her heart has been broken, and it doesn’t even sting. She thinks it probably should.

She comes, so hard it drives her to tears; and it’s not for the pleasure that she’s driven to the edge -- it’s the fear: of loss, of gain, of sin and death and loneliness and having someone to wake up to in the morning; of costs and consequences, of joy even more than sorrow -- of grace and justice and retribution; karma, the universe.

She thinks of Edmund -- of a voice on a machine and a faceless name -- and she fights the urge to vomit.

He kisses the line of her jaw before he steps out of the shower-stall, lets the door slide back into place; his handprint still visible in the condensation on the glass.

In his wake, the water splashes, draws across her skin, slowly dragging what’s left of her humanity away with every droplet, every rivulet drawn across her pores, taking and taking and washing her clean of things she forgot, things she doesn’t want to lose just yet; the heat rises in plumes of steam that cannot hide her, cannot help her -- the torrent is scalding even as she shivers beneath the spray.

She steps out, leaving puddles in her wake, because there’s nowhere left to run, and she’s still afraid of drowning; she doesn’t pause to look in the mirror as she passes - she knows she won’t recognize what she sees.

She doesn’t bother to dress, her hair cold as the water leeches, seeps against the pillowcase. She rolls on her side, doesn’t fight as Nathan turns toward her -- doesn’t touch, but sucks in breath close enough that she can feel the way the air in the room shifts around him, through him, expels and shifts again.

He might as well be touching, she thinks; there’s nothing they haven’t broken, and there’s no time left to fix it.

“I leave for Portland in the morning,” she whispers, and he stays where he is -- doesn’t move. His breaths come shorter, slower, until black covers her and forgets to listen any longer, forgets she’s not supposed to lean into his warmth.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

She sits up in the bed, overwhelmed by the sharp breath of detergent lingering on the linens, immortal beneath the musk of sweat and sex and sticky, messy, selfish human _need_ where it clings like a stain on the sheets, on her skin. A story written there that she’s never really noticed, only pays any heed as she approaches the end.

Their legacy, spelled there beneath her skin.

She turns, lays her ear against her hands, sees his eyes open in the dark, empty valleys against shadows.

“When do you have to go?” he whispers. She lets the sound cascade and fall, its echoes die before she answers.

“My flight leaves in seven hours.”

“Don’t go.” It’s a quick, short sort of response, like the words were out before he could think. He draws in a sharp breath; she doesn’t know what to say, but he saves her from trying to figure it out.

“I...” he starts, and she can’t see him, so much as feel the way he flounders. “Just... sleep now. If you still want to leave, I’ll get you there.”

She doesn’t ask how, doesn’t wonder -- she’s only looking for a way out, doesn’t care what it looks like, where it leads.

She’s so fucking tired that it _hurts_ , but she knows that sleep won’t cure the ache.

She waits until he’s out, away from the world; he sleeps like Somnus -- chest barely rising, never falling, walking the fine line between life and death. She doesn’t close her eyes, of course, doesn’t sleep; only shivers, and it’s predictable -- like the storm that never comes, never falls.

She’s watching him like he has the answers; like he’s the sky.

Lying next to him still feels more like home than anywhere she’s ever been.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

In the morning, before the sun wakes, she’s standing at the window with a bag of nothing in her hands, tagged with her name, but no address -- she’s not sure where she belongs anymore, if she deserves to belong to anywhere, to anyone.

If she deserves to be so caged.

She knows she’s going to be late, will be lucky if she gets out on the flight she’s meant for. She walks to the door of the car, watches him like it’s a choice, a test; like she wants him to fail.

He shakes his head, reaches for her arm before she can shuffle against the gravel for more than an instant, before more than a breath of rock grinding against rock can whisper from beneath the soles of tired shoes -- it’s habit, now, to stop for him, and where her mind wants to break it, her heart still clings.

He touches her, wraps her close enough to know his heat and feel his heart, and she realizes, suddenly, that she doesn’t want to go anywhere anymore -- it makes no sense, yet makes all the sense in the world.

And it’s funny, because the world’s as heavy as it ever was -- heavier, even. Everything she’d ever thought or dreamed -- it’s all backwards, now, jumbled and broken and swept together in a wreck of a heap she couldn’t recognize, never would.

“Trust me,” he breathes, and God Almighty -- for better or worse, in spite of _everything_ \-- she does.

She _does_.

She barely feels her limbs, the rush of air beneath her skirt and the tug of gravity at the surface of her skin in the moment, the instant; she barely knows what she’s doing, what _he’s_ doing, and it would be chilling, terrifying, if she’d still operated under the delusion that she knew anything at all.

Her arms tighten around him with the kind of blind faith that moves mountains, and she knows at the very core of her being that whatever happens, he won’t let her fall.

Her heart’s in her throat before her feet leave the ground.


End file.
